


Forever With You Never Sounded So Stupid

by junko



Category: Bleach
Genre: Fix-It, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-08-09 13:52:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7804363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junko/pseuds/junko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This story pretends 686 does not exist, but that canon ends at the chapter before, 685: "A Flawless Ending." This is the universe where Aizen stops time and takes Ichigo and Ishida away to train them for the time when Yhwach will return to destroy the “happiest moment.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Out of of the Frying Pan, Into the... (Aizen's) Lair?

Ichigo had no idea where he was.

What was weird about it, though, was that it kind of looked like Hueco Mundo. He was pretty sure he’d been standing--fighting actually--in the middle of a busted up Seireitei, like, five seconds ago. Now he stood in this weird shadow-world with a crescent moon and a whole lot of whitish, empty, expansive horizon. It was dusty and cold like Hueco Mundo, but how the hell could he be in Hueco Mundo?

“Where the fuck is this?” he asked no one in particular, as he sheathed Zangetsu in its usual spot behind his back.

“Kurosaki?”

Glancing over his shoulder, Ichigo saw Uryu in his Quincy uniform. Uryu was slowly sitting up, having been sprawled on the ground. Oh yeah, he’d just shot an arrow into…

“Hey! What happened to Yhwach?” Ichigo asked, reaching for Zangetsu again. Maybe the fight wasn't over? “Did I get him?”

“Doubtful,” came a low, monotone voice that, if Ichigo was honest with himself, often haunted his dreams. Aizen.

Seeming to step out of the shadows of this featureless place, Aizen was still in that funky-ass bondage gear. Somehow, despite straps and leather covering half his face, Aizen’s stupid hair still managed to look ruffled in an ‘I’m fashion cover ready’ way. Ichigo was pretty sure his own hair looked like a mess of sweat and out-of-control spikes. He ran a hand through his hair trying to fix it, like that was what mattered right now. Irritated with himself, Ichigo spat, “The fuck, Aizen! Where the hell are we? Did you do this?”

Ignoring Ichigo in that super-annoying way he did, Aizen looked out over the empty landscape like he was impressed with himself, which he probably was, that narcissistic prick. “Concurrent top level forbidden Hadō spells… I wasn’t sure it would work, but this does seem to be Hueco Mundo, even if my aim was a bit off.”

Uryu sidled up close to Ichigo and whispered. “Aizen. This is bad, right?”

“I don’t actually know,” Ichigo confessed. Crossing his arms in front of his chest, Ichigo considered the situation. “I mean, he was trying to kill Yhwach, too.”

Aizen arched his one visible eyebrow like maybe he’d heard them, but continued his self-monologue, anyway, “Los Noches isn’t even visible anywhere on the horizon, which is troublesome, but we should be able to sense its reiatsu. I created it, after all.” He turned in place, slowly, while he spoke, like he was a needle on a compass trying to locate true north. “I blame Muken. I’m sure I would have been able to teleport us precisely if the weight of that place wasn’t still holding me down.”

Ichigo leaned into Uryu, “Do you understand any of this?”

“Of course, you idiot,” Uryu said, smacking Ichigo away. “Look at his get-up. Aizen’s only been partly let out of the magical prison the Shinigami stuck him in, so it’s like the chains of the place dragged him off course.”

“Precisely,” Aizen said. He glanced over his shoulder at Uryu, as if noticing him for the first time. “You’re surprisingly clever for a Quincy.”

Uryu looked ready to tell Aizen to go fuck himself or some other creative insult so Ichigo jumped in with: “You said two concurrent spells. So, what was the other one?”

“I stopped time,” Aizen said.

Ichigo glanced at Uryu hoping he understood why stopping time was a good idea. Uryu looked as baffled as he was, and shrugged. Turning back to Aizen, Ichigo said, “Okay, why? And can you make it, you know,” Ichigo made the hand motion for packing something in tightly. “Less than a twenty minute lecture on the subject?”

Aizen smiled one of his thin, smirky smiles. “Why? We have all the time in the world, Kurosaki. But, yes, I can be concise. I stopped time because Yhwach controls all the futures. He does not control the present.”

Scratching the top of his head, Ichigo thought about that for a couple of seconds before saying, “Makes sense.”

“No it doesn’t!” Uryu countered. “I mean, maybe it protects us right now, but how can we possibly undo it and strike? If Yhwach can see all the futures, can’t he also see the one where you stopped time?”

Aizen gave Uryu a long, penetrating look. Ichigo had been on the receiving end of that glare and was impressed to see Uryu’s chin go out determinedly. It was a battle of wills between two of the most annoyingly smarty-pants people Ichigo had ever known.

They continued to glare silently at each other so long Ichigo finally rolled his eyes and said, “Okay, so…? Can he or not, Aizen?”

“I don’t know,” Aizen finally said quietly, dropping his gaze, turning away from them. He seemed to have figured out the direction to Hueco Mundo, and started walking.

Ichigo glanced at Uryu to see if he’d actually heard that. Uryu’s eyes looked about as surprised as Ichigo was. 

Running after Aizen, Ichigo taunted, “Wait, did you just say what I think you just said? Did the great Aizen just say ‘I don’t know’?”

Aizen refused to look at Ichigo, just kept marching resolutely towards his unseen destination. “Perhaps you shouldn’t be so gleeful, Kurosaki. If I knew for certain we were safe from Yhwach’s influence, I could formulate a plan of attack. As it is, we will have to ‘wing it.’”

“Hey, I excel at ‘winging it.’ My middle name is ‘winging it,’” Ichigo smiled.

“Yeah, tell Aizen about that time you were going to ‘wing’ how to kill all those Menos Grande,” Uryu said, coming up on Aizen’s other side. His Quincy cape flapped as he walked. 

“Um, hello,” Ichigo said, leaning across Aizen to get up into Uryu’s face, “My winging is was super-effective compared to your lame-ass plan to strap Zangetsu to your head or… fuck it, I don’t even know WHAT you were thinking.”

“Boys,” Aizen’s voice cut through the air. “As fascinating as that sounds, we need to focus on the future, on where Yhwach will appear next.”

“Well, he ain’t coming here,” Ichigo muttered.

“Why are you so certain?” Aizen asked.

“Because he said he’d come back and attack me at my happiest moment. There’s no way in Hell I’m ever going to be happy stuck here for all eternity with you two annoying dips.”

#

The first time they walked past a hollowfied bird suspended in flight, Ichigo thought it was the coolest thing he’d ever seen in his life. First of all, birds hollowfied? Who knew, right? Secondly, he really wanted to jump up into the air and poke it, because not moving like that really seemed like a major violation of the laws of physics.

“It is,” Aizen assured him. 

They’d been walking for what felt like half a day, but was probably more like twenty minutes. The funky leather restraints creaked as Aizen walked. Ichigo kept thinking that must chafe like hell. Also, walking along with Aizen for this long, Ichigo had realized something deeply disturbing. Aizen was taller than he was by, like, two inches at least. 

“The Kidō is forbidden because time doesn’t work like this,” Aizen continued. “The paradox of the fact that we’re experiencing time’s movement, despite being outside of the regular flow that the rest of the universe is experience may cause a catastrophic backlash. It’s worth the risk, however, so long as it protects us from Yhwach’s All-Seeing.”

“Forgive me if I don’t really trust your sense of risk assessment, Aizen,” Uryu said sarcastically. “You are the guy who thought all the souls of Karakura Town were worth making a key to get into the Royal Realm. Which, by the way, you didn’t even need. Apparently Urahara has a canon? Oh, and Quincies have these Sun Keys…?”

Was it Ichigo’s imagination or did Aizen’s eye twitch? 

“We’re not discussing the past, Quincy,” Aizen said in his ‘I’m-staying-calm-but-shut-the-fuck-up’ voice. “If you have a better plan for stopping Yhwach, I’d love to hear it.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking, actually,” Uryu said. “I have this ability, my Shrift, ‘Anthesis.’ In which I can shift fate between two points in time. How about I use point A as Yhwach, and point B as you,” Uryu pointed to Aizen, “And, I shift things, so he’s imprisoned in Muken.”

Even Ichigo saw the flaw there, “Um, and, what? Aizen is completely free? And, like, at what point was Aizen still in Muken? When Yhwach was terrorizing the Soul Society? You really think it’s a good idea to put Aizen there, at that moment? What, are you high?”

“You said he was on our side!” Uryu said, exasperated.

“Like, temporarily. Obviously!” Ichigo pointed out. “Without Yhwach why wouldn’t he just, I don’t know, finish what he started all those years ago?”

“Because I can’t,” Aizen’s voice cut through their bickering like the point of a knife. There was something there, too, something Ichigo had never heard from Aizen before--it was hard to even quantify, was it… vulnerability? Honesty? 

Ichigo stopped walking to stare at him.

“I can’t,” Aizen spat. Slamming a hand into his chest where Ichigo had last seen the hogyoku resting, Aizen wheeled on Ichigo and snarled, “I can’t become the Soul King. I have the power. I have the reiatsu--and more, to spare. I’m Shinigami enough; I’m Hollow enough. By chance, I’m even Human enough. But, I am not Quincy enough to be the Soul King.”

Everyone had stopped walking now and was staring at Ichigo.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Ichigo said, because, man, that look in Aizen’s eye was like that one time he said he’d come back and ‘eat’ Ichigo--full of desire, want… need. “I don’t have all that stuff anymore, either. Yhwach took back my Quincy side. I mean,” Ichigo touched the hilt of Zangetsu, who looked a hell of a lot like when Ichigo figured the Old Man to be his zanpakutō and not that blue-tongued freak of a Hollow, “I guess, he took it? He said he did? Things went white, and white...you know that’s all--”

“I know, I was there,” Aizen said.

“Oh, fuck you, of course you were,” Ichigo snapped. “Fucking everyone is running my life for me. You, Yhwach… fucking A, I am so tired of this ‘I planned your life from the moment of your birth’ blah-d’blah-BULLSHIT, okay? Done, you hear me? If we are spending even five more minutes together, Aizen, just no more ‘I know, I was there at the beginning of everything’ shit, okay???!”

“Very well,” Aizen said, sounding a little amused at Ichigo’s outburst, which only made him ten times more annoying, but whatever.

“So… that’s a ‘no’ on the Anthesis plan?” Uryu asked.

“Let us consider it more carefully,” Aizen said, starting to walk again. “It certainly seems as though it could be useful against an enemy who can anticipate all futures.”

Still recovering from having lost his cool, Ichigo wasn’t entirely paying attention, except he was thinking about how handy it had been that Aizen still had access to Kyoka Suigetsu even though Ichigo would have sworn in a court of law that he’d seen that zanpakutō shatter. “Hey,” Ichigo said, suddenly noticing something else kind of critical, “You’ve got both arms!”

Aizen lifted them both, as though to inspect them. “Indeed.”

“So… “ Ichigo started to ask, but then answered himself, “Fuck. It’s Renji, isn’t it? Dude. Why? Why’d you do it to him, your stupid hogyoku could grow your arm back. He’s.. what…going to need prosthesis or… ?”

“Or.. perhaps just employ your friend Ms. Inoue’s power?” Aizen asked dryly, as if that should have been the obvious answer. “She’s probably rejecting his losses right now. I wouldn’t worry about your shinigami friends. Kyoka Suigetsu has made sure that they won’t be thinking about either of you.” Ichigo started to open his mouth, when Aizen cut him off, “We can’t have their memories of you or me or Mr. Ishida here to alert Yhwach to our absence.”

Ichigo’s head was starting to hurt. “Okay, so we’ve dropped out of time and nobody remembers us… what is the point of this exactly?”

“We are buying time, Kurosaki,” Aizen said firmly, like he was the decider of everything. Then, he turned those fathomless brown eyes on Ichigo and pinned him under a merciless, cutting gaze. “How were you faring against Yhwach? Score a lot of hits? Or did he throw you around like a rag doll? When he spoke to me, he seemed to think you weren’t much of an obstacle.”

Ichigo glanced at his feet, kicking the sand a little, petulantly, “Okay, fine. The guy is tough, okay?”

“Yes, we agree on that point,” Aizen said. “Therefor, we train. Even if it takes a thousand years. I will train you to defeat Yhwach.”

Training was always good, Ichigo thought, but then the rest of that sentence hit him like a ton of bricks. “Not literally though, right? Aizen! Not literally a thousand years, right?”

Aizen said nothing.

Ishida let out a little sigh and shook his head. “I wish I’d brought a book.”

#

At least Aizen knew enough about what he was doing that it wasn’t that much longer until they actually saw Hueco Mundo in the distance. Ichigo remembered from the last time not to get too excited. No doubt it was still days away--Aizen grabbed his hand and, just like that, they were standing at the threshold.

“Whoa! How did you do that?” Ichigo dragged his fingers from Aizen’s grip, which was not at all grabby or possessive, just sort of steady and strong. Which was maybe more disturbing than if touching him had given Ichigo the creeps. He did not want to feel ‘safe’ being held in any way by Aizen.

NOT okay.

Ishida looked just as shocked to be holding Aizen’s other hand. He, too, jumped away from it, like the touch was poison.

“Shunpo, backed by massive reiatsu,” Aizen said by way of explanation. Then, with a little note of humor added, “Gin used to call it rocket-boosted flash step.”

“That was fast!” Ichigo said appreciatively, only now getting a slight sense of delayed vertigo. He was still shaking out his hand, as if trying to banish the Aizn cooties. “How come you never used that…” he was about to say to get away at the battle of fake Karakura Town, but decided not to remind Aizen of his big moment of defeat. “I mean, that would have made a quick getaway.”

“It’s only good once,” Aizen said. “Unlike Lady Yoruichi, I can’t maintain such speeds.”

“You, like, blew your wad?” Ichigo snickered, finally just wiping his sweaty palm on his hakama.

Aizen just glared at him for a beat, and then said, “Chose your palace. I’m going to bed.”

#

“Does this place smell like Grimmjow?” Ichigo asked, sniffing the bed sheet for a second time. “I think it smells like Grimmjow.”

“Do I even want to know how you know what Grimmjow smells like?” Uryu asked. He sprawled out in a comfortable looking pile of pillows in the corner of the vast room. Having shoved his glasses on the top of his head, he was rubbing his eyes like a little tired kid.

“It feels weird to sleep in someone else’s bed,” Ichigo said, letting the sheet drop. But he sat down on the futon, anyway. It had to be Grimmjow’s place--look at all this fur and complete lack of anything resembling decor. Maybe this place belonged to that Coyote guy, though? Someone--Orihime maybe?--had said the guy slept a lot, and this bed certainly seemed comfy enough. 

A knock on the door startled them both. Ishida nearly fumbled his glasses. Ichigo had his hand on Zangetsu. Aizen’s apologetic tone was a surprise: “Pardon the interruption, but I considered Ishida’s conundrum. I have a huge library. You may borrow my books. I mostly read nonfiction, but I found a few classics and some books of poetry you might enjoy. Just… return them all in one piece. Szayel had a tendency to devour his favorite sections. I lost several of my favorite childhood adventure novels thanks to him.”

Ichigo and Uryu stayed perfectly still, waiting for something more, but Aizen must have moved on because he made no attempt to enter. 

“Okay, was that weird?” Ichigo wanted to know, slowly releasing his grip on Zangetsu.

“That was definitely weird,” Uryu agreed, adjusting his glasses. “Aizen had a childhood?”

“And someone fucking ate his favorite books. That’s… just sad,” Ichigo said with a nod. “No wonder he’s a villain.”

“No, Szayel was an Espada. Renji and I fought him,” Uryu explained as he carefully creeped to the door. Once there, he slowly slid it open as if expecting a trap to spring. “If the books got eaten by that pink-haired freak, Aizen was already a villain at that point.”

“Oh,” Ichigo said, settling back onto Grimmjow or Coyote’s mattress. He was pretty sure that was Grimmjow’s sweat he smelled, and he snuggled into the furs a little deeper. Hueco Mundo was so damn cold. Shouldn’t a desert be hot? 

Ishida crouched at the threshold of the door, thumbing through the cache of books. “These are pretty cool. Aizen’s got decent taste. When he said classics I was worried he meant ‘Tale of Genji’ or some crap, but he’s got people I’ve heard of, best sellers.”

“Aizen’s a nerd,” Ichigo said, closing his eyes. “Is this really news?”

“I guess not,” Uryu said quietly. Ichigo could still hear him sorting through books and flipping pages, “I guess I never thought about Aizen doing anything… normal.”

Ichigo’s eyes popped open and he stared up at the ceiling. Rukia had told him that Aizen had been a captain for years--a century, apparently-- just being a regular guy, doing whatever Gotei captains did when there was peace. But, Ichigo had never know that person at all. And, of course, that person was all kind of a lie, anyway, wasn’t he? Who Aizen was before that moment on Sokyoku Hill was just some extended group hypnosis, right? The guy didn’t even seem to need glasses any more….maybe? Though how he could see anything with one eye covered up like that was a mystery in and of itself.

“I dunno,” Ichigo said after a while. “Just don’t trust him.”

“No chance of that,” Ishida said with a note of real irritation. “The man’s a monster. He broke the spines.”

#

Ichigo woke to the smell of bacon and maple syrup. “Yuzu?” he called out from the fuzziness of sleep. She must be making one of her big fry-ups again, because it smelled delicious. Oh, fuck, if he was at home, he’d better brace for a flying kick from Dummo Dad. 

Ichigo sprung upright, pillow for a shield.

His eyes snapped open to see an even stranger sight. Aizen, still in his weird bondage get-up, sitting seiza on the floor in front of a tray overloaded with breakfast. 

Not letting go of his pillow shield, Ichigo said, “What the hell? Last night you’re all polite and knock at the door and stuff and today you just burst in all stalker-like while we’re sound asleep?”

Aizen lifted a shoulder. “I’ve never been terribly good with consent.”

“No shit!” Ichigo said, tossing a pillow at Aizen’s head. Of course, he seemed to be ready for it and dodged easily. It slammed into Uryu, who woke with a snort. Blinking awake, Uryu groped for his glasses. “Ugh! Bazz-B fucking knock it off, already!”

A blush spread across Uryu’s face when he realized both Ichigo and Aizen were looking at him curiously.

“Bazz-B is a dick, okay?” Uryu said. “He was always ambushing me like that.”

“Okay,” Ichigo said slowly, not exactly being sure which Quincy had been Bazz-B, but more importantly still trying to decide if he should join Aizen at the table or what.

Uryu, however, had no qualms. He scooted right over and started piling things on his plate. It took Ichigo five seconds of watching Uryu shove things into his mouth before giving up trying to worry about poison or underhandedness and joined them at the table. Everything smelled amazing… and was delicious, too, almost as good as Yuzu’s. “You didn’t actually cook this, did you, Aizen?”

“No, I magicked it out of thin air,” Aizen said so dryly Ichigo almost believed him for a second, but then he continued, “Of course I cooked it. Who do you think did the cooking? Gin? He would have, but he’d have slowly poisoned me to death, so I couldn’t trust him with the job, and Tousen couldn’t see to do it.”

“I saw a cooking show with a blind lady on it,” Ichigo said around a mouthful of blueberries, “I think Tousen was shirking.”

“Probably,” Aizen agreed easily. 

“This tea is fantastic,” Uryu said.

“Mmm,” Aizen gave a little nod of recognition. “My private store. I have squirreled away enough to withstand a thousand year siege.”

There was that ‘thousand year’ thing again. Ichigo put down his fork slowly, “You know, about this training thing….”

“Urahara Kisuke is a master at hand-to-hand combat. Kenpachi Zaraki and Kuchiki Byakuya have honed your skills with the sword. Thankfully, this work is done, as these are not my areas of expertise,” Aizen said without nearly as much arrogance as Ichigo would have expected. In fact, Aizen seemed to hand out these compliments without even so much as an eye twitch. “I will teach you Kidō and reiatsu manipulation. When I’m finished with you, you will be able to stop a blade with no more than your fingertips.”

“Hey, I already did that one--”

“Intentionally, Kurosaki. Not this haphazard approach you have,” Aizen said. “No more will you rely on luck in the battlefield. I will teach you tactics and strategy.”

“This is going to involve learning chess, isn’t it?” Ichigo said, his heart sinking.

Uryu laughed, helping himself to the last of the French toast. “Good luck, Aizen. You’re going to need at least a millennium.”

#

Fighting Aizen was like battling Byakuya, only without any of the interesting clanging-sword parts. Ichigo had forgotten that Aizen really did not like getting his hands dirty. It was Hado this and Hado that; Zangetsu didn’t even touch Kyoka Suigetsu once. 

Ichigo sat down. Despite the bitingly cold wind of Heuco Mundo, sweat dripped from the short hairs at the back of Ichigo’s neck.

Aizen stood there on the rooftop of one of the ruined palaces and waited. 

“Do you ever attack?” Ichigo yelled out, “Or do I always attack you?”

“Tiring, isn’t it?” Aizen asked from his vantage point. Stepping calmly off the rooftop, Aizen flashed to where Ichigo sat with his butt in the dust. 

Ichigo squinted up at him. “I suppose that’s the lesson, huh? Don’t waste energy or let them come to you or something?”

Aizen pinched the bridge of his nose and said, “I’m going to take a moment to appreciate that you don’t even have the slightest clue what I was attempting to teach you.”

Ichigo swung out with his feet, hoping to take advantage of the moment. He hit something, hard. Really hard. It wasn’t that Aizen’s legs were that strong, but more that he’d slammed into some kind of barrier. Probably more fucking Kidō… but, omg, it he’d slammed into it so hard it stung!

“Do you understand now?” Aizen asked, as Ichigo rolled on the ground, gripping bruise on his leg, hissing ‘itai! Itai! Itai!” “A warrior like myself can not afford to waste energy. I must always have a reserve at the ready.”

Ichigo sat up, clutching his leg, “For defense. Like, when do you attack?”

“I try not to.”

Aizen’s words didn’t even make sense. “What?”

Aizen spoke clearer, louder: “I try not to.”

“... uhhhhh,” Ichigo’s brain heard the words, but they still weren’t forming into anything he could understand. He let go of his leg and let it straighten slowly. Tugging on his ear, Ichigo asked, “Are you teaching me… not to fight?”

“Finally,” Aizen breathed. Holding out a hand to help, Ichigo to his feet. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d rather die before choosing not to fight.”

Cautiously, Ichigo took Aizen’s hand and let him help him up. There was that weird sense of quiet strength again. Ichigo let go as soon as he was on his feet. “Um, well, it’s kind of against my nature--not to fight. I was born fighting.”

“No you weren’t,” Aizen said matter-of-factly. “You may have had to fight for your life from the very beginning, but what you learned was to strike and keep striking until your opponent conceded. There are other ways to win. Including not starting the fight at all.”

Ichigo squinted at Aizen, “I kind of thought Ukitake would be the Zen master, not you.”

“Aikido,” Aizen corrected. “Captain Ukitake is an Aikido master. Aikido is still a martial art. It’s true that a still stone will make a raging river part around it, but sometimes it’s best to send someone else to the river.”

Ichigo frowned. “Send someone else to the river? Okay, no. I’m never going to be that guy, Aizen. A thousand years, a million years… you’re not going to be able to change that part of me. I’m that other guy. I’m the one who goes in someone else’s place.”

“Yes,” Aizen said, sounding a little sad about it. Then all of a sudden, Aizen’s hand was over Ichigo’s heart, firmly pressed against his pectorals. And he was too close. Way too close. So close that Ichigo could smell him, the vaguely spicy, fecund scent of fallen leaves in autumn--a scent that Ichigo’s mind understood as ‘rot,’ but which was also… comforting and attractive.

Ichigo jumped back, slapping Aizen’s hand away. “The fuck are you doing?”

“Your reiatsu tastes differently. In fact, it’s markedly different from the last time we fought. You have lost something.”

Ichigo fought down a blush, turning his face away from that intense, scrutinizing gaze. “I told you that already. Yhwach took back my Quincy side.”

“No, that’s not it at all,” Aizen said. “You’d be dead if that were the case. Besides, your Quinciness self-evidently still present. All one has to do is look at the shape and form of your Zangetsu to see it. No, it’s something else.” 

Aizen took another step forward his hand out, and Ichigo backed away. “Boundaries!”

“Ah, yes, my apologies,” Aizen said, dropping his hand. He glanced over his shoulder at where he’d been standing during their last training bout. “Shall we fight again? I would really like to analyze your reiatsu.”

Absently, Ichigo rubbed at the spot Aizen had touched him. It was still warm. Should it still be warm like that? “I guess,” Ichigo said when he realized Aizen was still watching him, waiting for an answer. “I mean, you’re not really going to fight me, but whatever.”

Aizen held out his hand and Kyoka Suigetsu seemed to materialize out of thin air. “If it’s important we clash swords, so be it.”

“Well, it just doesn’t seem right, otherwise,” Ichigo murmured, feeling kind of stupid for having insisted. But, damn it, Kidō was a pain in the ass. He couldn’t break it just by swiping at it. The only way to win was to push it away with his spiritual energy, and without Mugetsu--well, Hadō 90 was fucking heavy. 

“I will not compare to the Kenpachi,” Aizen smirked, raising his zanpakutō.

“Really? Maybe that’s a good thing, because, like, I beat him my very first day in the Seireitei,” Ichigo said.

“And I left Hueco Mundo almost as soon as he arrived,” Aizen noted.

That this had been intentional on Aizen’s part had never occurred to Ichigo before. But...so, what did that mean? Was Aizen a coward? “Are you afraid of Kenpachi?”

Aizen made a little motion with his head that Ichigo couldn’t quite interpret, especially given that half of his expression was hidden by that bondage mask. “Not precisely, as such.” Holding up his zanpakuto so that the artificial sunlight reflected along the sharp edge, Aizen let out a sigh. “But, we are not direct, are we? Even when we strike, we are… elusive, serpentine, subversive.” Aizen dropped Kyoka Suigetsu’s point and glanced up at Ichigo, a small smile on his lips, “Kenpachi Zaraki is the epitome of ‘what you see is what you get.’ His aim is true, full of intent, and with the massive reiatsu to back it up. I would rather not go sword to sword with the likes of him.”

“He’s kind of weak to magic, though,” Ichigo pointed out.

“I know,” Aizen said with a little chuckle. “A surprising number of people are. Including you, much of the time.”

“Is that why you’re a Kidō master? Because your sword won’t go where you aim it?”

Aizen frowned. “Did I say that?”

Ichigo scratched his head. “Kind of? I dunno, your vocabulary is highfaluting, but, I think so?”

“I suppose I did,” Aizen said with a shrug as if to say he’d intended to all along. “Yes, well, it’s the truth. This blade was not meant for straightforward attacks. I learned that soon enough, didn’t I? But, it should have been obvious from the start. Its name alone implies the truth.”

Some bit of poetry about the moon and mirrors, how did it go? "Mirror Flower, Water Moon” Yeah, that was pretty much indirectness personified. 

Aizen sounded kind of bitter about it, though.

“So you were hoping for something more melee-type? Like Zabimaru or something?” Ichigo asked. He looked at Zangetsu and wondered what type it was, really. 

Aizen broke eye contact and glared at the horizon. “I was hoping to test your reiatsu at some point today.”

“Yeah, okay,” Ichigo said, readying Zangetsu to strike. He let himself get pulled into the challenge of a swordfight, but it didn’t slip his attention that Aizen had changed the subject. 

#


	2. Attraction Gets Some Traction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aizen continues to train Ichigo. But is their fighting style--or anything else--compatible?

After fighting Aizen for much of the rest of the afternoon, Ichigo knew two things for certain: Aizen was a ruthless, dirty cheater and… there was something going on between Zangetsu and Kyoka Suigetsu.

The second time Zangetsu’s blade sliced through empty air, Ichigo spun around so fast he would’ve sworn his motion made a sonic boom. “Stop doing that!” he shouted, being sure to look up as well as around, waiting for wherever the real Aizen might strike from. “Didn’t I say I wanted our blades to actually touch?”

“And they have,” Aizen’s voice said, somehow managing to come from behind. “At least once.”

Ichigo spun around again, but didn’t attack this time. Even though he could feel Zangetsu itching to rise up to meet Kyoka Suigetsu, he held the blade down. His hand shook with the effort. “Also, how can you keep doing this disappearing act, anyway? You said I was immune to your illusions.” 

Aizen smirked. “Did I say that?”

Ichigo squinted up at Aizen. How was it this guy wasn’t sweating? They’d been going at it, nonstop, for hours. “Okay, fine. I don’t remember what you said exactly,” Ichigo grumbled, trying to keep the whine out of his tone. “But when I arrived in the Seireitei, you said something about how you were glad you never showed me your release because it meant I was immune.”

Just then, Ichigo’s hand jumped, pulled by Zangetsu. The blade knocked lightly against Kyoka Suigetsu. Like two magnets drawn to one another, the zanpakutō rested together.

Ichigo stared at Zangetsu in surprise. This was what he’d noticed earlier. Before, when Aizen had done his disappearing trick, Ichigo just closed his eyes and let his muscles relax and let Zangetsu find Kyoka Suigetsu for him.

Add to that the whole thing when he and Renji were in Yhwach’s funky portal, when he swore he could hear Kyoka Suigetsu calling out to him… yeah.

It was fucking weird.

“Unaffected by Kyoka Suigetsu, is what I said,” Aizen explained, his voice low and seductive. “Not immune to hypnosis.”

Pulling his gaze from the strange sight of Zangetsu resting against Kyoka Suigetsu, Ichigo looked up into Aizen’s eyes. Shit. That was a mistake. Those chestnut brown eyes were fathomless and full of that look again, the one that made it seem like Aizen wanted to devour him whole. Ichigo shifted his stance and frowned at Aizen: “But if I was never exposed to your release--”

“You were exposed,” Aizen said definitively. “That was a lie. I need you to appear pristine to whoever might be listening. Do you not remember seeing Kyoka Suigetsu shatter before your eyes?”

“Um…” Yeah, he had, hadn’t he? 

Ichigo didn’t like to think back on that last battle with Aizen. It wasn’t that he couldn’t remember it, in fact--the problem was the opposite. Because he’d been merged with Zangetsu’s final form, Ichigo remembered every single detail of that battle with crystal clarity--almost like watching a movie. Of all the things his brain decided to imprint on and save forever, it would have to be the time he faced Aizen in his nightmarish butterfly form--and it would have to be a battle he didn’t even fucking win. 

Aizen was getting back up, even as Mugetsu had begun to fade. If it wasn’t for sneaky-ass Hat-and-Clogs, Ichigo would be dead. He could still see it. Every horrible second of Aizen struggling to his feet… like it was yesterday.

Pulling himself back to the question at hand, Ichigo stared at Kyoka Suigetsu again. 

Yeah, that was right, Aizen had been standing there holding out the blade, one of his many Hollow masks half on, saying something about how he was evolving again with some hokey line like, ‘Look, Kyoka Suigetsu is shattering…’

Oh, fuck.

“Shatter,” Ichigo said, “That’s your release command, isn’t it?”

“In a way,” Aizen said slyly. “But, yes, I see you understand.”

With effort, Ichigo pulled Zangetsu away from Kyoka Suigetsu and shoved the zanpakutō back into its sheath. As he did, he could swear he heard the Old Man grumbling. The fuck? Just how under Aizen’s spell was Zangetsu? 

“Okay, we’re done here,” Ichigo said, his hands clenching into fists. “What the hell was this lesson supposed to be, anyway? Because what I’m getting is: Aizen is a creep!”

Rather than being offended, Aizen tipped his head as though in acknowledgment. “I suppose that’s one lesson to be gained. But, this was about testing your reiatsu to uncover what it might be that Yhwach took from you.”

Ichigo felt his anger deflate and shift into curiosity. “Oh, right. So what was it?”

“I think you saw white because you were purified, in a way. I suspect that Yhwach attempted to reclaim your Quinciness, but, obviously, that was impossible. It’s too integrated,” Aizen lightly gestured with Kyoka Suigetsu toward where Zangetsu was stored. “I think what he took was the last bits of you that were corrupted by others. The parts of your zanpakutō given to you by Kuchiki Rukia, the bits of your Hollow-self forced out by Urahara Kisuke. Shiba Isshin’s gifted Shinigami-ness. Kurosaki Masaki’s Quincy parts that were corrupted by the white Hollow. I believe Yhwach purified the bits given to you by others, leaving behind only all the things that are yours--that are Kurosaki Ichigo, himself, alone.”

Ichigo frowned. 'Purifying' seemed like a good concept, but he didn’t like the idea of losing the things that other people gave him, being alone. “No,” he said, “That doesn’t seem right. One of the things given to me by Yhwach was the Old Man, himself. Zangetsu is still there.”

Aizen nodded thoughtfully. “That’s because you made Zangetsu your own. Perhaps, he couldn’t take what you’ve accepted.”

“Well, I accepted pretty much everything.”

“Indeed,” Aizen said. “That is where Yhwach failed.”

#

Uryu glanced skeptically over the top of the book he was reading. “Aizen said you were tight?”

“Kind of...?” Ichigo said, feeling a blush creep up his neck. He was sprawled out on Grimmjow’s bed in a light blue yukata he’d found in the closet after showering. “I mean, you know how he goes on and on? Well, he kept talking about what Yhwach took from me and said all sorts of shit, like how all the chaff was blasted from the wheat, but yeah, basically, he said that he felt I was tighter. I guess. More put together, maybe?”

Uryu stuck his nose back in his book and declared, “He’s flirting with you.”

“You think so, really?” 

Not looking up from his book, Uryu shrugged. Uryu was nestled among the pillows in the corner of the room he’d claimed as his own. There was room enough in the empty Los Noches for Uryu to have his own place, if he wanted, but they huddled together in this one room.

Ichigo never could tell when people were flirting with him. Never. 

Like, people could run down the halls and attempt flying kisses and Ichigo still didn’t get it. Seriously. It had been Chad who had to point out that maybe Keigo was legit trying to ask Ichigo out all these years, and Rukia who’d explained that Inoue was kind of more than a little into him. 

Maybe there was something wrong with him, but he just never got it. You know, the way he could never sense spiritual pressure or whatever? That’s how he was about sexual attraction.

Blind.

Utterly blind.

If someone clued him in, he could sometimes piece the bits together, but sensing it on his own? No way. And naked stuff just baffled him. It wasn’t that he didn’t know from cute. He fancied himself a bit of a fashionista, and he could tell when someone looked good and who he was attracted to, but… this whole sex part, yeah, no. It was hard to figure out. He used to tell himself he didn’t have time, what with saving the world. Then he had eighteen months with no superpowers and nothing to do but figure himself out. And, since no one was paying attention to him, he’d experimented… with kind of everything. What he’d found out? This was just who he was.

Uryu set his book down. “Shinigami are hard to read, but Aizen seems kind of bi to me.”

Ichigo shifted on the mattress so he could lay on his stomach propped up by his elbows. “You’re just saying that because he’s two-faced. You know that’s not cool, right?”

Plus, Ichigo was pretty sure he was bi-affectional, possibly pan.

“It’s not that,” Uryu adjusted his glasses like maybe he was a little bothered to be called out. “I’m thinking about all the stuff Rukia and Orihime told us. There was that lieutenant of his, what was her name?” Uryu looked to Ichigo, who shrugged. Ichigo was as shit with names as he was spiritual pressure. “Anyway, Aizen played her, for sure. Orihime said he was all creepy-touchy with her, so he must like girls at least some. But, his Arrancar army, it was like 99.9 percent dudes, and one lesbian.”

Lesbian? Which one had that been? But, Ichigo nodded like he understood, but he really had not thought a lot about the gender of the army he’d been facing. He’d been focusing on winning. But, he did remember one moment, “Aizen was pretty obsessed with Urahara-san. He called out to him at the end, like maybe there was respect there.”

Or more?

Fuck if Ichigo could tell something like that.

Uryu nodded like that was proof. “Like I said: the man is bisexual.”

Ichigo gave Uryu a penetrating sidelong glance. “It must be nice to live in your head, where everything is so certain. Even if Aizen is bi, what makes you so sure he was flirting with me? If he’s into someone like Hat-and-Clogs, I can tell you I’m not his type. I’m not smart enough.”

“And you don’t wear women’s shoes or wander around with your gi hanging open to your navel,” Uryu said a bit unkindly.

“Oi, geta were worn by men in the samurai times…” Suddenly, Ichigo wasn’t so sure. “Weren’t they?”

Uryu just raised his eyebrows as if to say ‘what do you think?’ But Ichigo didn’t know what to think. “Wait, so are you suggesting that Mr. Urahara…” oh. Maybe that one was kind of obvious, what with a husband and two kids living in the shouten. “But, what about Yoruichi?”

“Poly.”

Ichigo thought about that for a second, but came to a different conclusion: “You don’t actually know who is with who,” Ichigo said, sitting up suddenly. “You’re just making this stuff up.”

Inhaling sharply through his nose, Uryu adjusted his glasses again. “It seems intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer.”

Ichigo picked up one of Grimmjow’s pillows--a small satin one that was covered in shiny blue beads--and tossed it at Uryu’s head. “Yeah, well, a casual observer would assume I’m with Rukia, and I’m not.”

The pillow smacked Uryu in the nose, making him drop his book. Irritated, he flung it back at Ichigo, “Yeah, and why aren’t you?”

Even though it went wide, Ichigo caught the pillow with ease. “Because. Because I’m busy saving the world, okay? Besides, Rukia is just a friend.”

“She lived in your closet. You never tried it on with her?”

Ichigo grimaced and made a motion to toss the pillow again, just to watch Uryu flinch. 

“So, is it Inoue you’re into?” Uryu asked, his expression narrowing, like it might matter a lot what Ichigo’s answer was.

“No.” Turning the pillow around and around in his hands, Ichigo tried to decide if it was safe to confess the truth.

His book forgotten Uryu leaned forward, curiously, “Are you gay?”

Ichigo let out a sigh and flopped backwards onto the mattress. “I’m a whole lot of nothing, okay?” He tossed the pillow into the air, catching it, and tossing it again. “There are people I think are cute, that I could see hanging out with long-term, if you know what I mean, but… I don’t get really keyed up at the idea of kissing anybody in particular. I mean, I think there are definitely people I love, but I’m just not super keen to get into anybody’s pants.”

Uryu was silent for several beats. “Maybe you just haven’t met the right someone yet.”

“Sure,” Ichigo half-heartedly agreed. After all, it was what everyone always said when they got to this point in the conversation. Even Chad. Ichigo had hoped that Chad would have been more receptive, but when Ichigo had gotten to the part where he said he just wasn’t super-excited to hop into someone’s bed, Chad had given him the sad face and an awkward pat on the knee, like he felt sorry for him.

“Anyway,” Ichigo said, changing the subject. “We have bigger problems. If Aizen isn’t lying again, I’ve been exposed to Kyoka Suigetsu’s shikai… and maybe have been for some time? Also, I think maybe Zangetsu has a thing for Kyoka Suigetsu.”

“So you’re not gay, but you’re zanpakutō is?”

“Shut up about that, will you?” Irritated, Ichigo sat up. “This is serious. If I’m under Aizen’s hypnosis, we could be fucked and not in the way you’re so obsessed about, but like really in trouble, okay?”

Uryu blinked at him, as if trying to catch up. Frustrated, Ichigo tossed the pillow at him again. This time Uryu caught it. 

“How am I going to know if he’s all ‘come at me, bro’ but it’s actually you, and I…” Ichigo came up short, because he’d already run Uryu through once--a hazy image of Zangetsu piercing Uryu in the gut flashed in his memory, making him flinch. He looked away. “Well, you know what would happen. And, while you’re annoying as fuck, I don’t really want to be responsible for killing you.”

Deliberately setting his book down beside him, Uryu hugged his knees. “How do you fight perfect illusion?”

“I do wish you’d stop saying that word,” Aizen’s voice made them both jump. He stood at the door with another tray full of food. “My power is perfect _hypnosis_ , not illusion. Illusion is a mere light show. Hypnosis is the power over your perceptions, your mind.”

Ichigo realized he was standing up, on the mattress, the pillow clutched to his chest, like a shield. The other hand reaching for Zangetsu. Uryu had leaped to his feet as well. The Quincy cross dangled from his sleeve, and there was a glitter at his fingertips like he was on the verge of calling out his Heilig Bogen.

Ignoring the obvious threat in their poses, Aizen stepped over the threshold. “After today’s exercise, I thought you’d be particularly hungry.”

“You don’t have to keep bringing us stuff,” Ichigo said. “I’m sure we could find the kitchen on our own.”

Aizen chuckled. “Could you? I’m not sure you truly appreciate the vastness of Los Noches. And, out of curiosity, which, of the two of you, is the chef?”

Ichigo pointed at Uryu at the same moment that Uryu pointed at him. In unison, they said, “He is.”

“Just as I thought,” Aizen said, settling down on the floor. “Come enjoy dinner while it’s still hot.”

Ichigo wanted to refuse, but then, as if on cue, his stomach made a loud noise. 

He stood there, however, unmoving, until Aizen glanced up at him and said, “There is a way to circumvent Kyoka Suigetsu’s power. If it will procure your cooperation, I will allow the Quincy to have the advantage.” He then looked at Uyru. 

Uryu hadn’t relaxed. In fact, the bow was even clearer now, shimmering in the air. “If it’s such an advantage, why would you give it to us?”

Aizen had settled to his knees. His posture was contrite, but his words were biting. “Because that's how negotiation works, Quincy. Not that your people have a lot of experience with cooperation, but typically, for a truce, both sides give--”

“Don’t you talk to me about brokering peace, Shinigami,” Uryu spat. “I know exactly how you people negotiate. You pretend to give ground, and then you kill us all and leave our bodies to the torturers.”

Whoa! Where was this coming from?

Aizen nodded. “Shinigami I may be, but, like you, I was too young to have fought on the frontlines of the last Quincy war.”

“Frontlines,” Uryu noted. “I noticed your careful choice in words, Aizen. Did you help torture us? In the aftermath?”

Ichigo’s attention bounced between Aizen and Uryu, like he was watching a table tennis match.

“I did,” Aizen said without any hesitation. “I won’t pretend to regret it, either. I am a scientist, and yours was an unknown species to me. However, know this: I, too, am an enemy of the Gotei. You will not find me defending their corrupt and broken system, of which the treatment of Quincy is only one small part.”

“Cold comfort, torturer,” Uryu spat.

“Indeed,” Aizen agreed with a small nod. “However, is your Quincy pride worth not having an advantage over me that could save the life of your friend and yourself?”

Uryu gave Ichigo a brief glance, but it was obvious what his decision was when the bow disappeared. “You’re a monster.”

Aizen didn’t even flinch. “I am. Although why you think I’m at my most monstrous at this moment, I’m uncertain. The deal is an honest one. No one will be harmed by what I offer here today. In fact, I only offer it to mollify your fears; I, myself, gain very little. You will forever have an advantage over me, and yet I can only imagine our alliance,” Aizen nodded at Ichigo then, “is, at best, temporary.” 

Ichigo didn’t know what to say to that. Who knew what was supposed to happen to Aizen once Yhwach was defeated? But, it did seem pretty likely they’d be enemies again. Like, probably immediately.

Rubbing the eye that was still covered in Muken bondage, Aizen let out a little sigh. Uncovering the rice, he began to dish it out. “But what I’m buying is trust. A precious commodity, trust. One I’ve squandered in the past, and thus must pay a premium for.”

Ichigo nodded, that part made sense. No one was going to trust Aizen easily anytime soon. But, they were figuring out how to have a truce, weren’t they? It seemed good that Aizen was taking these steps toward them, so, even if Uryu was still standing there looking miffed, Ichigo decided to take the plate being offered, especially since he smelled curry. He sat cross-legged on the floor, and helped himself to a few pickles. “So what are you going to do after Yhwach is defeated?”

Arching an eyebrow, Aizen pursed his lips. “Well, I’m not going back to Muken, I can tell you that much. There will be a fight. I guarantee it. If you try to take me down, I will destroy you.”

Yeah, just as he figured. So, Ichigo shrugged as he accepted a helping of curry beside his rice. Anyway, they’d cross that bridge when they got to it. Making sure crazy Yhwach didn’t literally wreck everything was the main priority. Aizen really did seem like the lesser of two evils at the moment, and that was saying something.

When the curry came out, Uryu sat down and held out his plate. “Why are you helping them, the Soul Society, when you hate them so much?”

Aizen chuckled, as he ladled out the rich curry. “I could ask you the same thing, Quincy.”

“Ishida,” Uryu said around a mouthful of chicken and vegetables. “You stopped calling him ‘Ryoka Boy’ so you might as well stop calling me ‘Quincy.’”

Nodding, Aizen said, “I’m helping the Gotei, Ishida, because I don’t actually hate the Soul Society as a whole. It’s where I was born, after all. I don’t want to see it entirely destroyed. Dismantled and rebuilt, yes. Reduced to nothing but ashes? Not so much.”

“Yeah,” Uryu sneered, “If everything was destroyed, what would you rule over?”

Aizen chuckled around a sip of tea. “Just so.”

“You were born in the Seireitei?” Ichigo asked, his mouth half-full. The curry was damn good. He’d never say so, but Aizen’s curry rivaled Yuzu’s. 

“Yes,” Aizen said, though he didn’t offer any more.

“I don’t think of you as having a mother or a father,” Ichigo admitted, shoveling more rice onto his plate and reaching for a second helping. “I guess I thought maybe you just sprang out of the ground, fully-formed or something.”

Aizen made a little agreeable noise. “We all come from somewhere, Kurosaki.”

“Yeah, but you know everything about me.” Ichigo pointed out. “We don’t know anything about you.”

After giving Ichigo a long, thoughtful look, Aizen took another sip of tea. “Perhaps some other day I will tell you my life’s story. It’s enough that I plan to give the--,” he quickly corrected himself with a little smile, “Ishida the only known resistance to perfect hypnosis.”

“What is it, anyway? How come he gets it and not me?” Ichigo asked.

“Because it’s too late for you,” Aizen explained. “To be resistant to my power, you must touch the naked blade of Kyoka Suigetsu before I have ever released in your presence.”

Uryu set down his chopsticks. He had a look on his face of pure… disdain. “Seriously? You want me to touch your naked ‘sword.’” He made the air quotes. “Is this some kind of sick joke?”

Ichigo slapped a palm over his face. “You know, Dr. Freud. It could just be fucking literal.”

Aizen let out a long-suffering sigh. “An eternity with teenagers. I may be in Hell, at last.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which all my ships show. Apologies if these aren't yours (especially since I now more clearly understand your pain, fam.) 
> 
> But, please keep in mind that Ishida is full of a lot of conjecture (and so any ships he's talking about could be bullcrap) and the main thrust of this story isn't going to be ship, anyway. I'm trying to answer some of the things Kubo never did. 
> 
> Like, how was it that Aizen had Kyoka Suigetsu there in those last few chapters, when we all SAW it shatter during his defeat. My answer: Ichigo was actually under hypnosis. We know Aizen can release silently, so who's to say he didn't finally put the whammy on Ichigo during that final fight. It would explain, too, why Urahara was later SO NERVOUS when he realized Aizen's power had grown in Muken--I think, in fact, at that point Urahara realized that he'd fucked up. He'd assumed that Kyoka Suigestu was absorbed by the hogyoku and so hadn't taken any steps to be sure that Aizen had been separated from his zanpakutō in Muken.... Also, it makes the whole 'this is one of Aizen's tricks' line after Yhwach's visit to Aizen make sense--Yhwach been hypnotized. Which is also why Yhwach as so susceptible to all of Aizen's tricks in those later chapters.
> 
> So there you go, one mystery solved
> 
> Why Ichigo could hear Kyoka Suigetsu all the way from the Royal Realm is something I'm still unraveling, working out. If you have ideas, I'd love to hear them. 
> 
> I am thinking that I may have an answer as to 'why did Aizen become the Soul Society's enemy?' too, but I'm still working out a connection to the Soul King. It's going to be so far out of anything provable in canon that I'll have to beg your patience with me. The nice thing about fic? If you don't like my answer, it's no big deal. 
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoyed this. Here's hoping I can get writing on my ByaRen soap again soon, too. I have to admit that for survival I've transferred the majority of my Bleach feels onto Aizen. But, I think, given enough time, I will be able to go back to everyone else, too. 
> 
> My god the salt. I'm still so salty, it's not even funny. I hope all y'all are doing better than I am! :-)


	3. Sensei is Kind of Awesome, but Also a Complete Bastard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aizen begins teaching Ichigo Kidou in earnest, and they talk... intimately.

Ichigo just finished his first set of stretching exercises, when Aizen came striding across the dusty plain of Hueco Mundo. It would be more dramatic if the winds swirled around him, but with time stopped there was, like, no breeze. The air was stifling. Stuffy and cold. This place sucked rocks.

“What are you doing?” Aizen asked, coming into shouting distance. 

Straightening up from his toe-touches, Ichigo give Aizen a look like he would’ve figured it was obvious. “You want me to pull a muscle or something? I’m stretching out!”

With all the bondage leather obscuring most of Aizen’s face, Ichigo couldn’t quite read his expression. At a guess: exasperated. Was it Ichigo’s imagination that more curls of Aizen’s hair were visible now? “I’m done fighting you.” 

Having been thinking about Aizen’s hair, Ichigo couldn’t quite understand what Aizen had said. Done fighting? How could that be? “Wait, what? Does that mean I’m ready to face Yhwach alread--”

“Good heavens, no. Not in the least,” Aizen interrupted. “I thought you understood. You’re at the pinnacle of your abilities with zanpakutō. I wouldn’t presume to improve on the work of Urahara Kisuke.” Something about that made Aizen chuckle a little to himself, almost fondly, which made Ichigo remember the conversation he’d had with Uryu the night before. Ichigo tried to see if he could tell if Aizen was hot for Hat-and-Clogs or what. Aizen, however, mistook his intent look as a cue to continue. “I will teach you Kidō.”

“Kidō, huh?” Ichigo wondered how patient a teacher Aizen would be. If mastering Kidō was anything like trying to keep those weird energy balls of Kukaku’s steady, Ichigo figured he had zero natural talent going in. Dusting his hands on his hakama, Ichigo nodded. Right, then. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. “Okay,” he said, “But I ain’t calling you sensei.”

#

Nope. Ichigo was totally going to have to call Aizen ‘sensei.’ In fact, Ichigo was considering ‘sensei-sama,’ because he’d never had a better teacher in his entire fucking life.

For all being the Big Bad Villain, Aizen was shockingly patient, for starters. Like, even when Ichigo’s first Hado 31 came out more like one of Grimmjow’s ceros, Aizen just laughed it off--like a real laugh, like he was genuinely delighted.

Then, rather than try to force Ichigo to make a textbook perfect Hado 31, Aizen worked tirelessly with him to use the energies that came naturally to him. When Ichigo would have quit after having lost control YET-A-FUCKING-AGAIN, there was Aizen ready to try another approach from some newly considered angle. 

What was also weird, was that Aizen’s normally annoying habit of over-explaining everything in some kind of monologue from Hell actually meant that Ichigo was left with a pretty good foundation of how the stupid Kidō was supposed to be working. It got to the point where Ichigo could actually begin to tell when he was getting it right because it was just as Aizen had described 

Then there were those times when Ichigo could feel Aizen’s reiatsu surrounding him, guiding him… like strong arms around his own… a gentle, guiding touch….

Ichigo’s heart did a weird little uptick. Involuntarily, his own reiatsu flared up as though in defense, to push Aizen away.

Aizen backed up immediately. His reiatsu vanished. “Yes, of course,” he nodded, as though Ichigo had actually said something out loud. “It’s time for you to try it now, on your own.”

“I’m no good at this,” Ichigo said to cover the sad, empty feeling that swirled around his gut in the absence of Aizen’s reiatsu presence.

“You have a tremendous gift,” Aizen said. When Ichigo cracked a ‘don’t fucking flatter me’ glare, Aizen smiled, “This is your very first day, Kurosaki. No one begins as master.” Standing beside Ichigo, Aizen looked out at the smoldering remains of their targets--the crumbling ruins of some previous battlefield. Glancing down at him, Aizen’s gaze was kind, generous. “Your gift is in your power. Given a good enough teacher, anyone can learn incantations and reiatsu flow. None of that matters if there’s no power to back it up.”

Ichigo didn’t know what to make of this compliment. So, he kicked at a nearby stone and sent it flying. “You’re a surprisingly good teacher,” Ichigo grumbled, rubbing the short hairs at the back of his neck. “You missed your calling there, sensei.”

Aizen chuckled. “Not at all. I simply abandoned it.” When Ichigo gave him the cocked eyebrow, Aizen explained. “I taught for decades at Academy.”

You did?” Ichigo had never heard this. “What did you teach? Kidō?”

“No, I would never have revealed my skill level in that area,” Aizen mused. “I taught calligraphy.

Ichigo waited for the rest of the joke. Aizen just stared out at the smoke rising in the distance. “What? Seriously? You’re an art teacher?"

Aizen’s lips pursed together in irritation. “I am a hachidan shodo instructor. That is the highest level achievable in the form. But, yes, you unschooled cretin, I suppose I was an art teacher.”

Ichigo bopped his shoulder against Aizen’s with a snorting chuckle, “‘Unschooled cretin’? Careful there, Aizen. I might start to think you’re warming up to me.

“No chance of that, Ryoka Boy.” His tone was flat, but he gave that little half-smirk that Ichigo normally found kind of scary, but was beginning to think was just Aizen being a little shit. In a fucking cute way.

The more he got to know Aizen, the more Ichigo understood something. “No wonder they all hate you.”

That seemed to take Aizen by surprise. He blinked. “Who hates me? The Soul Society?”

“Yeah, when you’re not actively trying to kill me, you seem like a pretty decent guy."

Aizen stared into Ichigo’s eyes for several long heartbeats. The look in his gaze was cold, calculating…. dark. His expression was blank, except one muscle on his jaw that twitched. Finally, his nostrils flared and he looked away. “Don’t do this to yourself, Kurosaki. Making a friend of me is a grave mistake. Look around you,” Aizen lifted his arms at the desolate, empty buildings of Los Noches. “No one I have ever called comrade yet lives.”

“Yeah, but that’s not scary,” Ichigo insisted. “It’s just tragic. I know you’re lonely.”

“You know nothing, child.”

Aizen started to walk away, so Ichigo grabbed for his arm. The bonds of Muken didn’t feel like leather, despite their look. Just touching them made Ichigo feel heavy, like the weight of Hado 90, pulling him down, making his brain feel thick and slow. Something, too, like ‘stickiness’ started to wrap itself around his fingers.

A wave of spiritual pressure suddenly pushed Ichigo back. His hand came away with a wet, sucking sound.

“Damn it,” Aizen hissed. For some reason, he glanced at the smoldering remains of their practice yard. HIs frown deepening at whatever he saw there, even though all Ichigo saw was plumes of rising smoke. “Time is pervasive, insidious. I don’t know how long I can hold it, especially with Muken’s Kidō constantly attempting to drag me back. I’m having enough trouble keeping time from intruding...”

“Yeah, I’m fine, actually, thanks,” Ichigo said once he’d recovered his balance.

Aizen narrowed his eyes--well, eye, the one that wasn’t covered by the bondage. “Kurosaki, let me be as clear with you as possible. I don’t care about your well-being. I only feed you because I need you alive and healthy. I only train you because you are a weapon I can use to defeat Yhwach. When Yhwach is dead, I will seize the Empty Throne and make it mine. And when I am Soul King, all bets are off. If you stand in my way, I will not hesitate to take you down.”

Ichigo shouldn’t have been shocked by the coldness of Aizen’s speech, but he kind of was. Well, okay, shocked wasn’t the right word. It wasn’t like Ichigo didn’t figure Aizen kind of always had another agenda going, but what surprised him was that Aizen’s goal totally hadn’t changed.

Like, at all.

It was the Soul King he was still after. Like, that hunk of human-shaped weird was anything special.

Rubbing his hand where he’d been bitten by the Muken bondage, Ichigo frowned. “Have you seen the Soul King?”

“I have,” Aizen said.

A gust of icy wind ruffled Ichigo’s hair and made him shiver. “Okay, then I double don’t get it. Why would anyone in their right mind ever want to be anything like that...thing?”

The fire in Aizen’s eye seemed to shift slightly. He turned his head and crossed his arms in front of his trim chest. “You’re the only Soul to ever ask me that, Kurosaki.”

Really? It seemed like a pretty legit question. Aizen had been ready to destroy all of Karakura Town to make the key to get into the Royal Realm. No one had ever wondered why before? No one had asked him why? “Not even Gin?”

Aizen chuckled. “No, not even Gin. Or Kaname, either.”

It took Ichigo a second to remember that Kaname was Tousen’s given name. “Huh.”

A gust big enough to pick up sand, swirling it around the desolate, gray air of Hueco Mundo. Aizen’s hair curl pulled free of its bondage and fluttered like the ribbon on a war standard. His gaze focused on the distant horizon line. “I want to be Soul King because the current one is--or was, until you killed it,” Aizen’s eyes danced in amusement as they briefly met his, “a monster.”

Ichigo thought about that for a moment and nodded. “Yeah, that seems accurate. But, it still doesn’t explain why you want the job.”

Aizen gave Ichigo a long, measuring look. “Let us walk back together. You should be fed and I need to figure out what to do with your Quincy friend.”

“Ishida,” Ichigo reminded him.

“Yes, Ishida,” Aizen agreed. “There’s much I still don’t understand about Quincy. If we’re going to have any hope of defeating Yhwach--”

“Aizen!” Ichigo said, rapping his knuckles against the soft, brown curls on Aizen’s head. The gesture was casual but Ichigo was mindful of the Muken bonds. “Answer the fucking question.”

Aizen gave Ichigo another sidelong glance. Walking side-by-side, Aizen’s extra inches meant Ichigo had to tilted his head slightly to meet his eye. “I want the job because the system is broken, Kurosaki. That’s why it must be overthrown.”

Wow, Aizen the revolutionary, huh? “But, what do you mean broken? Urahara said--”

“Urahara Kisuke is a coward and a fool,” Aizen snapped, the closest thing to anger Ichigo had seen from him since they’d come to Hueco Mundo. “He knows as well as I do that the Soul King is rotten and hollowed out at its core, and has been for centuries--nay, millennia.” Aizen seemed to stew about that for a moment silently, but then took a deep breath. Lifting his head and focusing on the main palace of Los Noches ahead, he said, “What do you know about what happens to souls when they die?”

Ichigo scratched the top of his head, remembering Rukia’s bunny drawings. “There’s like Pluses and stuff, but konso sends most spirits on. Some go to the Soul Society and others become Hollows.” Ichigo tried to think of what else there might be, but came up blank. “Right?”

Aizen’s lips pursed and then he sighed, “Yes, I see you’ve been taught as well as any Academy graduate. You’re basically correct. It’s important, however, to be precise. The souls that go on to the Soul Society end up in the Rukongai. But, human souls are not the sum total of the Souls in the universe. There are Shinigami who are pure souls, born inside the walls of the Seireitei. There are Hollow souls. There are Quincy souls. There are Full Bring souls. And there are zanpakutō. How Souls are distributed is one of the main functions of the Soul King.”

The soft sand made little ‘poof-poof’ sounds as they walked.

“Okay,” Ichigo said, to show that he was following along. “But that still doesn’t sound like a really interesting job for a smart guy like you. I mean, putting pegs into their corresponding holes? Sounds pretty dull.”

“Yes, but unfortunately, the job can not be automated,” Aizen said with a tiny trace of a sneer. “You may not have noticed the extreme disparities in the Soul Society, but you’re friends with Abarai, are you not?"

“Yeah,” Ichigo agreed warily, wondering where this sudden turn was headed. He squinted, The sun overhead was bright, though it did nothing to ward off the chill of Hueco Mundo’s air.

“Abarai is a powerful shinigami," Aizen said, "I knew that when I first recruited him from Academy.”

“Wait! Whoa, whoa, hold your horses. You recruited Renji? How much bullshit are you trying to sell me? Before becoming Byakuya’s lieutenant, Renji was in the Eleventh.”

Aizen raised an eyebrow. “I see. Abarai didn’t mention his brief stint in my Division. Well, not surprising given the shameful way he left. He was never a good fit for us. His Kidō skills were abysmal,” Aizen gave Ichigo a little amused glance. “Not unlike yours, really. Power, but no focus. But Abarai had had the advantage of years of Academy training, so I felt him to be a lost cause as far as Kidō went. I was more interested in his zanpakutō skills, but then he proved difficult to control.”

‘Difficult to control’ Well, that was a pretty creepy choice of words. However, it was super easy to see Renji not getting along with ‘Captain’ Aizen, either. “So what does Renji have to do with the Soul King?”

“If Abarai didn’t tell you about his time with me, he might never have told you about where he came from. You understand how the Rukongai works? The walled Seireitei is in the center and Districts encircle it, in ever widening bands until 80th?” Ichigo nodded, because it seemed Aizen was expecting him to. “Abarai, with all that natural power, was sorted into the 78th District South, Inuzuri. I presume you’ve never been there, so you’ll have to take my word for it. It’s a hellhole. Most Souls assigned there die at an early age. There is no food for a hungry, powerful Soul like Abarai’s. Or the little Kuchiki’s either.”

“Rukia,” Ichigo breathed.

“Yes, your precious friends,” Aizen nodded knowingly. “They were lucky. They were strong enough to survive until Academy--probably because they found each other. It’s a very rare Soul that comes up from that deep, alone.”

“Okay,” Ichigo said, trying to think through this whole mess. “Are you saying you want to be Soul King to... what? End hunger in the Soul Society?”

Aizen let out a little snort. “Why must you reduce everything I say to its most base and ridiculous form?”

“I’m awesome like that?”

Aizen let out a little chuckle. They’d come to the courtyard of the main palace, which Ichigo assumed must belong to Aizen. There was no doorway at the ground level, but a wide, white stone staircase led up to an impressive set of double doors.

“So, that’s really it?” Ichigo asked, feeling like he had just been sold a bridge in Brooklyn. Aizen had been a patient teacher, but Ichigo wasn’t stupid enough to imagine him a saint. “Let me get this straight, you’re telling me that your whole ‘kill everyone in Karakura Town’ plan was so you could end suffering in the Soul Society? Why am I sensing a huge disconnect here? Kill souls to save souls from being hungry? Are you actually insane and this makes sense to you.... or is there still a lot you’re not telling me?”

“A bit of both,” Aizen admitted. “I am, undoubtedly, mad--to one extent or another. But my mental state does not negate the injustice of the Soul Society.”

“Okay, well, I guess you have a point there.” Arguing with Aizen was a little like trying to follow a complex Kidō spell. It was easy let some tiny thread slip and lose the whole thing. He hadn’t really expected Aizen to accept the insult of being insane, either, so that was weird. Aizen seemed deeply unflappable. 

Shoving his hands into the pockets of his hakama, Ichigo followed Aizen up the broad staircase. 

“So,” Ichigo said, “You’re mad at the Soul King because you were sorted out past the 80th District or something?”

“No,” Aizen said with a little huff of derision. “I already told you: I was born inside the Seireitei.”

“So, okay, someone you love died out there?”

“No,” Aizen said. 

Using his reiatsu, Aizen pushed open the double doors to reveal a grand conference room. High ceilings made their footsteps echo. A long table, surrounded by high back chairs occupied the far end of the room. Dark shadows gave the vast room a cavernous feel. Aizen led Ichigo to a narrow open staircase along one wall.

Ichigo followed along, trying to put together the puzzle pieces. Okay, so, Aizen had this revolutionary thing about how souls are unfairly sorted--yet he and everyone he loved ended up on the good side of the whole divide. Was he really that altruistic? Yeah, that was TOTALLY it, because altruism usually involved all the bloodshed and murder Aizen’d been up to.... NOT.

Yeah, no, half the puzzle was still AWOL.

“I still don’t get it,” Ichigo admitted. “From what I can figure you’ve spent your whole life trying to become Soul King… just because some people you don’t even know are hungry?”

“Do you really care so little about the injustices of the world?” Aizen drawled sarcastically. 

“Yeah, but we’re not talking about me,” Ichigo said. He was forced to follow behind Aizen as they mounted the stairs. It was too narrow to walk side-by-side. It was only a little awkward to be staring at Aizen’s skin-tight leather clad ass. “We’re talking about you. You, who gives zero fucks about an entire town of human beings. Sure, you’re all Machiavellian with your whole 'ends justify the means' schtick, but I’m not buying it, okay? If you want me to believe you did all this because your heart bleeds for the poor, unfortunates of the world, you’re going to have to do a better job selling it.”

At the first landing, Aizen turned down one of the featureless white halls of Los Noches. This one, at least, seemed to be punctuated with Arabic-style windows at regular intervals. 

“It’s not just hunger, Kurosaki. It’s all the injustices that I loathe.”

“Okay, so give me a concrete example. Something personal,” Ichigo insisted, hurrying his steps so he could resume walking beside Aizen.

Aizen gave Ichigo a brief, measuring glance when he came up beside him. “I really rather thought you’d be most sympathetic to the story of your friends’ background.” 

“Well, you miscalculated,” Ichigo grumped. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel for Renji and Rukia’s plight, but he just couldn’t connect the dots to why Aizen would care.

Breaking eye contact, Aizen sighed. “Very well. But this story needs tea.”

#

After what seemed like ten minutes of aimless wandering down identical, featureless hallways, Aizen slid open the door to a small room. Ichigo was a little nervous that Aizen had maybe brought him to his bedroom, but when he stepped inside he was struck by how much it looked like the backroom of the shoten, where Urahara and the gang often gathered to have meetings. The floor were tatami and there was a simple, low table in the center of the room. A kusuri-dansu, an apothecary’s cabinet, occupied one wall. Framed calligraphy hung on the walls. It wasn't a bedroom, but it was homey.

Having nothing else to do, Ichigo slumped cross-legged on the floor in front of the small table. Watching Aizen gather the tea things, Ichigo realized he’d never been alone with Aizen before. Not like this, anyway. Sure, they’d faced off in battle and Ichigo had been on his own then, but this was different.

Intimate.

Quiet.

Ichigo shifted, hoping that a new position might banish his sense of ill-ease. He wasn’t exactly afraid of Aizen’s power, though the bonds of Muken did nothing to hide any aspect of that--especially now that Ichigo had touched the creepy stuff. Aizen must have massive power to be able to move at all.

But Ichigo had always known Aizen was strong.

Something far more dangerous permeated this nearly silent room. It was heightened when Aizen settled in front of Ichigo and he found himself inches from dark curls and soft brown… eye? Okay, at least the eyepatch thing put a damper on the whole seductiveness of the moment. Even so, Aizen seemed to read Ichigo’s body language in a way that underscored Aizen’s real power. “You seem pensive,” he said, his voice a deep purr. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m just wondering where you’re going to get hot water in this frigid desert,” Ichigo lied. Knowing better than to try and hold Aizen's gaze while he did it, he glanced around at the calligraphy on the wall, the cabinet, the floor… until he bounced his way back to Aizen’s knowing smirk.

“Indeed,” Aizen said, as if he knew better. Lightly, Aizen added, “I was prepared for a potential siege upon my fortress. Los Noches’s location is no accident. We sit atop a huge underground natural spring. The water is cold, but fresh. Drinkable.”

“Clever,” Ichigo had to admit. 

Aizen nodded. He held the teapot in the flat of his palm, closing his eyes as he spoke. “The caves beneath us are cold enough for food storage as well. I had prepared to literally feed an army for as long as two years.”

“Only two?” Ichigo asked sarcastically. “Not much of a master plan.”

“Mmmm,” Aizen said, cracking his one eye open, “Any longer would be impractical. Besides, had a successful siege continued that long against us morale would have been sunk.”

Ichigo quirked an eyebrow. “There was morale?”

“There was belief I could win,” Aizen said. Ichigo heard the gurgle of boiling water coming from the pot in Aizen's hand. Finally, he set the pot down and set out two bowls. The bowls were hand painted white glaze on a rough brown ceramic. A stylistic chickadee had been sketched on the white section. It was homey… personal. “For the Espada that was what passed as morale. And loyalty, too, as it happens. Had belief in my ability faltered one iota there would have been mutiny,” Aizen chuckled darkly as he poured dark streams of liquid into the cups. “Gin would have led the charge.”

“Um… wasn’t he on your side?”

Aizen blinked. “Oh, of course, you didn’t know. No, no, Gin tried to kill me in the end. Came closest, I’d say.”

Ichigo pointed to his nose and made a little harrumphing noise.

Aizen chuckled and took a sip of his tea. 

So Aizen wouldn’t give him that one. Fine. Ichigo cautiously picked up the pretty bowl. The tea smelled amazing. Not like the stuff they had at home, nuttier, maybe? “You must have laid in a metric fuck ton of tea, huh?”

“Yes, exactly so,” Aizen repeated wryly. He sipped his tea again and then let out a breath. “How do you feel about fate, Ichigo?”

“Fate?” Ichigo snapped, almost spitting out his tea. “I fucking hate it.” 

He’d said it without thinking, but it was true. _Fate_ … the whole idea of being bound to some predetermined future made Ichigo’s lip curl. If fate was inescapable then what was the fucking point of anything? Why bother fighting if everything you did was already decided by the gods or destiny? Fate… fate made Ichigo feel powerless. Like, there was nothing he could do to affect the outcome…? No, no, Ichigo would never accept that. Never. 

In fact, he couldn’t think of anything he hated more than fate.

Aizen watched him very carefully over the rim of his tea bowl. “I see,” he said, finally. “Something we have in common.”

“Yeah?” Ichigo prompted, wishing there was something to eat. Something sweet to cut the bitter edge of the tea.

“Yes,” Aizen said. “So much of our lives are determined by a single moment of fate. Where and when we were born.” 

Ichigo set his tea bowl down carefully. “I thought you said you were born somewhere nice.”

“I was,” Aizen said, though he lifted his shoulder in a little shrug. “Well, nice enough I suppose. My mother was a chambermaid in the house of a well-placed lord.”

Huh, that wasn’t what Ichigo was expecting. Not at all. “A maid? But, you seem--”

“Like a noble?” Aizen interrupted sharply. “Yes, well, there’s a reason for that. I am of noble blood. At least, in part.”

Ichigo couldn’t help the snicker that came out. “Seriously? A bastard. You’re saying you’re a bastard. Like, a real bastard?”

Aizen’s gaze narrowed for a heartbeat, but then seemed to relax. He stared into his tea bowl for a moment. Long, thick lashes obscured his eye. Taking another sip of his tea, he nodded. “I suppose it’s hilarious to a Shiba. But, I only tell you this fact, because it made my situation more… complicated. I don’t know that anyone would have cared as much had I been legitimate. Possibly, the power I was born with wouldn’t have had to be hidden away at an early age. It may have even been cause to celebrate. But as it was,” Aizen’s gaze came up. “My mother taught me to hide it. I didn’t understand, at first. I thought she was foolish, overly paranoid. But, then she became pregnant again.”

Ichigo realized he was holding his breath. He wasn’t even sure why.

“Do you know about the Maggot’s Nest?” Aizen asked. Ichigo thought maybe he’d heard something, somewhere, but Aizen went on to explain, “There is a division in the Gotei whose sole job is to hunt down ‘potential dangers’ to the Soul Society. These are people who have done no wrong, understand. They only represent a _possible_ threat, but it’s enough to condemn them to life in prison. Underground. Starved, with mad men and murderers for company. This is where they took my mother and my unborn sibling.”

“Wait, why?” Ichigo asked.

“Because my… sister was so powerful that her reiatsu was detectable in the womb at great distance,” Aizen said, his eyes watching his own reflection on the surface of the tea again. “My father was afraid, you understand? We were, none of us, legitimate. We were, all of us, a threat. Perhaps if my father were less of a coward, he would have simply had us killed. But, he didn’t. He turned my mother in to the authorities, to the Onmitsukidō. My mother… didn’t protest when they said her child was dangerous. She looked me in the eye and told me not to worry, that she and my sibling would be fine. She told me to be a **good** boy.” Aizen let out a small breath and straightened his shoulders. “Ah, the irony, eh? But, you see, at the time I was no more than ten years old. I was a good boy, as such things go--a dutiful son, a decent enough sort. Moreover, I understood what she was saying to me. She was telling me that the only way I could avoid the same fate was to stay hidden, to never let anyone see what I was truly capable of…. Ah, Kyoka Suigetsu, such a gift in that regard.”

Aizen trailed off, as Ichigo struggled to digest it all. 

“My mother, you may have guessed, died inside the Nest of Maggots, and with her, my sister. So predictable, I suppose.” Aizen’s voice was as steady as when he started this story. No quaver of emotion, no warble of unspent tears. In fact, when he met Ichigo’s eye again, he smiled lightly, “I found out, years later, that their combined souls Hollowfied on the spot. It pleases me to imagine it: their vengeful ghosts tearing that place apart, however briefly. I hope Hell welcomed them with open arms. Or perhaps they reincarnated here,” he gestured to Hueco Mundo.

Ichigo didn’t even know what to say. It was made harder by the fact that Aizen was completely unfazed telling this horrible tale. 

“But, you see it comes down to fate,” Aizen continued after swallowing the last of his tea. He set the bowl down deliberately on the table. “Had my sister been born in the remotest of Districts, perhaps her strength would have become like the Kenpachi’s-- legendary, feared. Or perhaps she could have been a Kuchiki, a clan desperate for such power…. But no, fate--the Soul King’s insane, illogical mechanizations--put her in the worst place at the worst time.”

“You blame the Soul King for your sister’s death?”

Aizen chuckled. “No, I blame my father for that. But, my sister’s fate was something that sat uneasily with me for a long time. Her fate made me wonder about the nature of Souls, how some could be so much more powerful than others, where they came from, what made raw power something to be feared by the Soul Society, how I could obtain more power, if a Soul’s power could be altered… all of that, I suppose.”

“And vengeance, right?” Ichigo asked, almost desperately. He felt so much, while Aizen seemed to feel so little. “You wanted vengeance.”

Aizen’s smile was cold. “I would not have shed a tear to see it all burn,” he admitted. “Dismantling the whole system would have been a great pleasure. And, perhaps it will be, yet.”

Ichigo couldn’t stand it. His emotions were all bollixed up and he wanted to hit something, break it down with Zangetsu. He found himself hopping to his feet. Why didn’t Rukia or Renji ever tell him about this Maggot place? Did they even know about it? Ichigo had a hard time believing they’d just let things like that happen…

But they kind of always did, didn’t they? 

Byakuya sure did. He’d even said at the end of their big fight that it was important to uphold the law because without law, what were they? 

Ichigo hadn’t understood that sentiment then, and he sure as hell didn’t understand it now. These laws fucking sucked.

And what the fuck? Were he and Aizen the only ones who saw it?

 _Wait_.

Ichigo shifted his attention back to Aizen, sitting seiza, his bondage clad hand wrapped around the empty tea bowl, looking so contrite… 

“This is all a trick,” Ichigo decided. “You’re trying to get me to turn on the Soul Society.”

Aizen glanced up, his expression weary, almost tired. He started gathering up the tea things. “Not all all. I don’t expect you to suddenly turn your back on all your friends because I’ve told you my childhood was less than ideal. You’re not that sort, Ichigo.”

“Damn straight!” Ichigo snarled. Then, again, “Wait.” He stood there, glaring, not knowing what to think about anything. Finally, he shouted, “ARGH! Your mind games are fucking me up!”

Aizen laughed. “I’m not playing any games, Ichigo.” He stood up, having wiped down pots and put everything back in its appropriate cubby. “You asked for my personal story; I gave it to you. It’s up to you what you do with it. Gin said ‘boo-hoo’ and preceded to explain, in excruciating detail, what it felt like to starve to death. Kaname countered with a story far more heartbreaking than my own--one that made my blood boil at the injustice of it. I’m not special among those wronged by the Soul Society. I doubt anyone you ask had an easy time of it. The Soul Society is broken and sick. I told you this already. We all suffer for it, each and every one of us, every day. The only way out is to break it down and build it up anew. The King is dead. We’re halfway there. All I want from you is that you kill Yhwach. I will reforge the worlds from whatever pieces remain.”

“You got a high opinion of yourself there, Aizen.” Ichigo said with a snort.

“I’m the only one even remotely capable...or willing,” Aizen said with a little shrug. “And I may not have the strength, even so. But, the first order of business is to destroy Yhwach. That’s all you have to agree with me on at this moment, Ichigo. That’s it.”

“Yeah, well, right. That’s a given,” Ichigo said, feeling all mixed up again. He frowned at his stocking feet for a long moment and said, “Did they really do it--just take your family away like that? Didn’t anyone stop them? It doesn’t seem like it could be true; it's too awful. Are you telling me the truth about your sister? Your mom?”

Aizen ran his fingers through his hair. “You should go back to your friend. I should make dinner.”

“Are you just lying so I won’t know how to feel after we defeat Yhwach? Are you telling me this bullshit so I’ll look the other way and let you go?” Ichigo was shouting, but Aizen was unmovable.

“Would it comfort you, if I were?”

Ichigo considered. “Kinda?”

“Then, I’m a liar. You know I am. I’m a manipulator who would say anything to get you to do my bidding.” Aizen lifted a hand and gestured languidly towards the door. “I need to feed you boys. So, go on. Run back and tell your Quincy friend that food will be on the table in an hour. Longer, if you stand there gaping at me.”

“Right,” Ichigo started to turn toward the door. Pausing, he turned back, “God, I fucking hate you. Like, you’re almost likeable sometimes, and then… I don’t know what to make of you.”

Aizen smirked at that. “Ah, you see, you are immune to my charms, after all, Kurosaki.”

“Yeah, right,” Ichigo said as he turned and stalked off. Because he wasn’t. Not at all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, it occurs to me that I should mention that while I do think it's possible Aizen's backstory could be true, it's just as possible that it's not. It is, you'll note, very similar to Ichigo's--a dead mother and the idea of a younger sister would also appeal to Ichigo. So, if you don't like the backstory, you don't have to accept it for this story to work for you.


	4. 4. Evil Azien is Evil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just when Ichigo is starting to trust Aizen, he pulls a stunt like this....

Uryu shook his head while pulling careful threads through cloth spread taut on an embroidery hoop. Without even looking up, he asked Ichigo, “And you believe him? I mean, one: this is Aizen, and two: this is Aizen.”

Ichigo lay back against the pillows that smelled of Grimmjow and scowled up at the white ceiling. Everything was white, like death. If he stayed here any longer, Ichigo was going to fucking paint this ceiling, at least. Something bright. Something cheery.

He scowled thinking about Aizen. Aizen’s story had been gut-wrenching, but awfully similar to his own. Aizen must have heard about Ichigo’s mother, and everyone knew how important the job of being a big brother to his sisters was to him. “I don’t even know,” Ichigo huffed at last. Propping himself up on his elbows, Ichigo looked down the expanse of the bed at Uryu . “Where did you even find that sewing stuff?”

Uryu lifted his head and the hoop, “This? I brought it with me, of course.”

“You brought a sewing kit to battle?” Ichigo was more incredulous than mocking.

Glancing at Ichigo over the rim of his glasses, Uryu’s expression was pure disdain. “You didn’t?”

Ichigo patted his shihakusho as though looking for a place for it. “Where would it even go?”

“Look, it’s not my fault Shinigami don’t have pockets,” Uryu said, returning to his work. Ichigo strained to see what it was Uryu was making. The colors were pretty--a myriad of blues and yellows. He was pulling through a thick thread of a sapphire blue now. 

Hauling himself out of the bed, Ichigo settled in the pillows next to Uryu. Uryu gave him a suspicious glance, but Ichigo ignored it. Instead, he watched Uryu’s careful progress. He could see now that Ishida had filled in some pre-printed pattern. This one showed two birds sitting together on a branch, huddling close, one with a protective wing sheltering the other from wind or rain. Both birds had been outlined in black threads. The smaller one was golden yellows and oranges; Uryu worked on the larger one. 

“So, what’s it going to be?” Ichigo asked resting his back against the wall and his arms on his knees. “A pillow case?”

Uryu nodded. “I’ll add lace to the edges.”

“Nice. She’ll love it,” Ichigo said.

Uryu glanced at him as if trying to judge his intent. “She who? I’m making it for myself, if you must know,” Uryu sniffed. “It’s for after college or whenever I’m ready to set up house. I have a box I collect things like this in: potholders, dishtowels, and other linens.”

Ichigo nodded. His mom had had one, too. Probably a Quincy thing, “A hope chest.”

“Mine’s just a cardboard box,” Uryu said, regretfully. “Most of what I make these days I sell online to make rent.”

“Your dad doesn’t help with that?” As soon as Ichigo asked, he regretted saying anything--just bringing up Ryuuken made Uryu go all steely-eyed and set-jawed. Everything between those two was a sore point. Ichigo tried to back off, “No, no, of course he doesn’t.”

“Every month he sends me money,” Uryu said. “Every month I send it back.” Ichigo thought that was it, the sum of the relationship between father and son in a nutshell, but then Ishida tucked his embroidery needle into the cloth and set down the ring. Uryu flexed his fingers, making tight fists and releasing them. “He showed up. Did I tell you that, Kurosaki? Ryuuken came to the Royal Realm. Your dad, too.”

“My dad?” Ichigo pointed to his nose and sat up straighter. “Isshin?” he repeated as if he had to use Dummo Dad’s given name just to be absolutely certain Uryu didn’t mean someone else.

“That heartsilver arrow I used at the end? They brought that to me,” Uryu explained. Then, his fists pounded into his thighs, “Apparently, that bastard had a weapon that could defeat Yhwach all along, which would have been nice to have when I infiltrated the Sternritter. I could have kill Yhwach in his damn sleep. Also, he showed up wearing a Quincy uniform…” Uryu's mouth worked like he was so angry he couldn’t even find coherent thoughts. “I’m really not sure which pisses me off the most.”

Ichigo only heard half of what Ishida was saying. His heart thudded slowly in his chest. With each heavy beat, thoughts echoed in his head: Dad was there. He never even came to see me. 

Maybe it was for the best. Would Ichigo really have wanted Dad to see him with a Hollow horn jutting from his forehead? It was bad enough that he’d had to freak out Inoue again. What would Dad have said? Actually, Ichigo could picture it. At first Isshin would look stunned and a little shocked, then he’d make some dorky bad pun about his ‘horny teenaged son.’

This time the heartbeat felt like a stab.

Dad had been there when Ichigo faced Aizen, and Yhwach was so much harder. Facing Yhwach was defeat after soul-crushing defeat and Ichigo felt so… so… lost… and where the fuck was Dad this time? Renji had been the one to pull him up, tell him to get his ass in gear and his head back in the game. 

Ichigo let his head fall back against the hard, cold stone wall. He closed his eyes.

It wasn’t over though, was it? Maybe Dad come through in the end.

Maybe.

Maybe Isshin couldn’t face Ichigo or Yhwach, because this was about Mom. How long had Ichigo lay there under Mom’s body, with her warm blood soaking him and her body too heavy for his tiny body to move? Hours. It had felt like forever with that sickening smell and his own weakness making Ichigo sob. Mom wouldn’t wake up and Ichigo knew it was his fault. 

Where was Dad all that time? Was he helping the Quincy with the Aschwallen or whatever the fuck?

Dad’s absence been a kind of condemnation, like he was punishing Ichigo for killing Mom. And then years spent being pushed away, sometimes physically, from… everything, it felt like, but for sure work at the clinic. Dad constantly reminding him that he was useless when it came to saving people; Ichigo was only good for heavy lifting… and fighting.

Yeah, no, Ichigo was on his own.

On his own. With fucking slippery-evil Aizen as his only shinigami ally.

“I think it was my mother’s heart, Ichigo. I think I shot Yhwach with the silver from my own mother’s heart.”

“What?” Ichigo blinked up out of his depressive trail of thoughts. “You…what? How?”

Uryu’s head was bowed and he seemed to stare down at his fists curled on his knees. “It never left me. The memory of that day--no, those horrible days--after Mom died. He was taking something from her, I think I understand now. But, Mom was dead, had been dead for days, and he wouldn’t let her body go. He kept… violating it. Everyone just wanted a funeral, but he refused. I never understood, I thought… I heard what people said; I thought he was sick, cold-hearted. But, I think.. I think he was trying to save this silver.”

Ichigo couldn’t even begin to process any of this new horror, so he asked, “Your dad knew? He knew Yhwach would come back?”

“We all knew,” Uryu spat. “There was a prophecy.”

Right. Everyone knew. Except Ichigo. Ichigo never even knew he was a fucking Quincy. 

“The Quincy weren’t the only ones who knew of the prophecy, Kurosaki,” Aizen said, having shown up at the door, randomly, like he always did. He leaned against the door jam, his arms crossed, like maybe he’d been casually listening in for several minutes. He stood up now, and Ichigo was certain that he saw the bonds on his shoulders shift loosely. Aizen was unraveling them. “Urahara Kisuke knew exactly what you were from the very start, and he knew all about the Auswählen and what it meant. It’s impossible that the Captain-Commander didn’t know--either of them. Yamamoto having faced Yhwach before, and Kyōraku traveling, as he does, in the shadows.”

Ichigo wasn’t sure if Aizen meant that last bit about the shadows literally or figuratively. With shinigami superpowers, you never knew what someone might be literally capable of. 

“I’m sure, in fact, why his partner refused to allow him bankai against my Espada. They knew the Quincy were studying us, particularly our bankai,” Aizen said, casually scratching the skin at his throat, which he could now reach under the folds of the Muken bonds to get at. 

“And you knew,” Uryu pointed out, setting aside his embroidery. 

Striding further into the room, Aizen waved his hand dismissively. “Of course. Why do you think I was in such a hurry to make the oken?”

“Because you don’t give any fucks about human lives?” Ichigo offered.

Aizen rolled his eyes--wait, how long had both eyes been visible? “Of course I didn’t care about them. But, you’re deluded if you think my attitude is uncommon among Shinigami.”

Ichigo stood up now, “Quit with your lies! Shinigami… that’s their whole point, to protect humans!”

“No,” Aizen said patiently. “Shinigami only care for humans when they’re dead. We care about Hollows and we care about Pluses. The dead--weights on the scales. That’s the extent of our concern. Because really our only care is ‘maintaining balance,’ which is nothing more than propping up the status quo. Given that shinigami recently wiped out an entire Rukongai village to keep things ‘even,’ they really don’t even give many fucks for the dead. Believe me, if Karakura Town had been interfering with their precious balance, they’d have sent the entire Gotei to slaughter them.”

“I don’t believe you,” Ichigo said firmly, despite the sick feeling tightening his gut.

“You never wondered about Ghost ships? Entire towns that seemingly disappear due to some ‘plague’?” Aizen’s voice was like a happy purr. But, when neither Uryu nor Ichigo rose to the bait, he shrugged, sending another ripple through his bonds. “Best if you don’t think too hard about it. If you do, your reward is to be the villain.”

“Do you have some point?” Ichigo wondered, trying to use anger to hide his agitation. “I mean, you creeped in here again, this time without even a plate of onigiri, so what the fuck, man. What do you want, anyway?”

Aizen’s sculpted eyebrow raised and he smirked. He seemed to know he’d hit a nerve, but, for once, he chose not to comment on it. “The time table has moved up,” he said. “Despite my best efforts, Muken dulled my senses. Thus, it seems I’ve miscalculated… again.” Ichigo swore he could almost hear Aizen’s teeth gritting as he admitted that particular fact. “Time has re-started. Or rather, our timeless bubble is breaking. It’s a complicated Kidō requiring massive reiatsu. Even so, it should not have been a problem for me. I forgot about you,” Aizen pointed a finger first at Uryu and then at Ichigo… or maybe just behind him where Zangetsu rested against the wall.

“Yhwach is already here,” Aizen said. “He’s inside both of you. His presence created a paradox. The spell can’t hold for more than another day, and that’s with my full concentration”

“A day?!” Ichigo’s nerves jangled. Were they ready?

“Less than,” Aizen said. “Keeping things together is not worth bleeding off that much of my energy. I’ve already refocused on breaking down the bonds holding me to Muken. If I could fight Yhwach at full strength--”

Ichigo cut him off. “So what are we talking about?” Ichigo said, trying to keep the squeaking panic out of his voice. “How long have we got?”

Aizen’s smirk spread into a decidedly evil smile. The black ropey straps that had hugged Aizen like a sheath, sloughed off, threads unraveling into dust. "Three minutes."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, head's up, peeps. Josey (cestus) has been keeping me informed about all the stuff that's coming out about the light novel and some of it is making me so crazy that I may write it in here, just so I can make it make some kind of sense. I'm telling you this now, so you can 1) chose to bail now, or 2) go read up on what I'm talking about.


	5. 5. As Expected of a Villan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ichigo jumps into battle expecting to face off with Yhwach... only things are really weird in the Soul Realm at the moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am basing what is happening with the Soul King on bits of the Bleach light novel as it has been explained to me by my amazing beta-reader and excellent friend, Josey (cestus). If it seems insane and unbelievable, that's why.

Ichigo jumped through the Garganta ready for a fight, Zangestu already off his back. He came out swinging.

And nearly took off Grimmjow’s head.

“What the fuck?” Grimmjow snarled, coming up from his instinctual duck. His nose crinkled up, “Where’d you come from, anyways? And, why do I smell Aizen all over ya?”

Ichigo turned, about to point out that Aizen was right behind him, only to see Aizen, torso bare of the Muken bonds, shaking his head. Kyoka Suigetsu was out, and Ichigo did not need the finger-to-lips hint not to say anything. His hand was on Uryu’s shoulder, so Ichigo guessed that for whatever reason Aizen wanted Uryu’s presence hidden, too. Turning back, Ichigo shrugged.“I dunno. Where’s Yhwach?”

Grimmjow pointed. 

Several feet away, a bunch of shinigami were huddled around the remains of the Royal palace throne. He could see Kyōraku’s pink kimono and the distinctive striped, bucket hat of Urahara. They seemed to be doing some kind of high level Kidō and bickering.

“What are they doing?” Ichigo asked.

Grimmjow lifted a narrow shoulder. “Fuck if I know. They just been having me and Nel haul up bits of black Quincy goop whenever someone spots a piece of it.”

“Unbelievable,” Aizen’s voice was a snarl. Ichigo glanced at him in surprise. Aizen never sounded mad, like, ever. Also, he was half-naked, which was worthy of a double-take at least--possibly a triple-take, because who knew Aizen was so ripped… and full of holes? In the sunlight of the Royal Realm, Aizen’s skin had a sickly paleness to it, but it was also clear that Muken had literally invaded his body in places. Small, puncture wounds dotted his neck, arms, back, and torso. The hogyoku still sat like a dark, purple jewel in the center of his chest. His hair was shaggy unkempt, like he’d rolled out bed, but that one long curl was back in its usual place, as if by magic.

Aizen had let go of Uryu and was striding toward the dais.

Grimmjow’s nose went up and his eyes darted around. “Fucker’s here somewhere, I swear I could smell that motherf--Whoa! Fuck me, Quincy! Where’d you come from?”

“Same place as Ichigo,” Uryu said, adjusting his glasses as he came to stand beside Ichigo. “What do you think he’s doing?”

Aizen was making a beeline for Urahara, Kyoka Suigetsu raised. 

“I think he’s gonna kill Hat-and-Clogs,” Ichigo said, most of his words swallowed by the air he kicked up going into shunpo. Ichigo jumped into the space between Aizen and Urahara, Zangetsu raised to stop the blow. 

He and Aizen met eyes over the edge of Zangetsu. Wordlessly, Aizen lowered his blade and feigned interest in the proceedings Kyōraku presided over.

“Oh, Kurosaki!” Urahara trilled, as if completely unaware of his near demise. Which, Ichigo supposed he would have been since he wasn't immune to Aizen's shikai. “I thought maybe you… oh.” He spotted Uryu. Shielding his eyes, as though to get a better view, Urahara put on a funny little smile and a nervous laugh, “Ah, Mr. Ishida, too? Ah, this is...unexpected and… _unexpected_.”

“Yeah, happy to see you’re alive, too,” Ichigo said, his eyes tracking Aizen as he cautiously sheathed Zangetsu. 

“What he’s not saying is that you’re a problem for him, Ichigo,” Aizen said without turning around. The holes in his back looked sore and raw. “You and Mr. Ishida. For the same reason you were a problem for me. You’re both Quincy. As such you contain the essence of Yhwach. He’s trying to decide if extracting Yhwach will kill you, like it certainly will your friend.”

“Where did you come from, exactly?” Urahara asked, a complete non-sequitur since he hadn't heard Aizen’s comments. There was a note of suspicion in his voice, however. 

“From Hueco Mundo,” Aizen said.

Only it wasn’t really him that said anything. Ichigo turned, because Aizen’s voice came from behind, as if he were coming up the same stairs Ichigo had just shunpo’d up less than a minute ago. And… he was. Or, at least an image of Aizen, still fully wrapped in Muken’s bonds, strode toward them. Ichigo couldn’t help but check, and sure enough, half-naked Aizen still stood less than a foot from him, watching the Kidō proceedings.

Okay, this was weird.

“Sōsuke-kun,” Urahara smiled, as though seeing a long lost friend, “How does it feel to finally set foot in the Royal Realm?”

“You should have let me murder this smug son-of-a-bitch,” Real half-naked Aizen murmured.

Fake Aizen stopped a few steps below them, “Satisfying,” it said. “You must thank your partner for leaving the beacons for me. I doubt I would have been able to open the Garganta without her help.”

“I guess I should be impressed you can summon one trussed up like that,” Urahara said.

Real Aizen let out a snort of a chuckle the same time Fake one did. 

Other people were starting to notice the presence of Fake Aizen, including Momo who came rushing forward with a shout. Kyōraku’s hand shot out to stop her. Ichigo was the only one who could see that Real Aizen was within inches of her. Real Aizen gazed at Momo with a curious expression--almost wistful or… sad, and then looked beyond her as though searching for someone else. Apparently satisfied that whoever it was wasn't around, Aizen returned his attention to Urahara.

Ichigo meanwhile was fascinated by the Muken bonds. They were reacting to something in Captain-Commander Kyōraku. They were stretching up from Aizen’s waist in graspy little strings, almost like tiny, thread-like hands, as though trying to reach out to Kyōraku.

Or his heart.

Creepy.

The Captain-Commander seemed to feel it, too. He took his hat off his head, and covered his chest with it. Ichigo could see the gesture for what it was, but he still managed to make it seem like a casual sort of move, like he was just fanning himself from the sudden surprise of seeing Aizen.

“My, my, Mr. Aizen. I suppose we should have expected you to make an appearance,” Kyōraku said. “I dare say Captain Kurotsuchi will be disappointed to see that you have disposed of his chair.”

“You can thank Yhwach for that,” Fake Aizen said. Meanwhile, the Real Aizen picked his way through the crowd to take a better look at whatever was being done to the Soul King’s throne. “A casualty of war, that lovely chair. Though it did free me to defeat him more effectively.”

Urahara glanced at Ichigo as though for confirmation. 

“Yeah,” Ichigo shrugged. “I can’t take full credit. I maybe got one blow in?” Then there was Renji. Renji who’d done most of the fighting as an Aizen stand-in. Brave fucking Renji who was probably still laying in a pool of his own blood down in the Seireitei. Jesus fuck, Ichigo hoped he was still alive down there. Ichigo banished that thought with a shake of his head, he couldn’t think about Renji now, and Renji was a fighter. He’d be okay. He’d have to be. “It was a good hit, but, yeah. Most of it’s on Aizen.”

“Why would Aizen help us?” That was Hisagi’s voice from way in the back.

“Yeah,” came a number of others, one of which sounded like Ikkaku. 

Fake Aizen just smiled. Real Aizen’s voice whispered in Ichigo’s ear. “It’s useless for me to say anything. They won’t believe that I have always cared deeply for the Soul Society, and, in fact, that my love for it motivated my betrayal. The real question is, do I spoil Kisuke’s plan? Do I tell these shinigami sheep what their masters intend for them?”

Urahara shifted his feet, as though anticipating Aizen’s thoughts. In a second, he flashed forward and tapped Fake Aizen’s body in several spots before flashing away again.

“And he accuses me of repeating tricks,” Aizen scoffed.

Kidō flashed and Fake Aizen jolted stiffly, before reiatsu chains sprang up from the ground to bind him in place. Ichigo blinked, because he actually saw the chains waving uselessly in empty space at the same time. He rubbed his eyes to try to banish the headache inducing double-vision.

Real Aizen let out a sigh. “But, he’s still a clever bastard. He knows I’m not there now. He won’t have felt my reiatsu responding; he’ll sense his Kidō not connecting” 

Ichigo shifted his attention to Urahara who was clearly scanning the area. For some reason, Urahara’s gaze settled on Uryu. In a second, he had Benihime out and pressed against Uryu’s throat. 

“Oi!” Ichigo said, already moving to intercept. Because given the holy bow glimmering at Uryu’s fingertips, this could get ugly quickly. “Drop it, Urahara-san! That’s really Uryu! I swear to fucking god!”

“Yhwach’s death should have killed him,” Urahara said.

“Yeah, well, me too, at a guess,” Ichigo said. “I don’t see a knife at my throat. Not yet, anyway.”

That last line made Urahara’s blond eyebrows arch questioningly. “”Yet’?” He repeated, lowering the blade. “What makes you say ‘yet,’ Mr. Kurosaki?”

Ichigo glanced over his shoulder to where Real Aizen stood near the Soul King’s throne. His curly head and bare, pale shoulders could just be seen over those of the gathered crowd. Aizen glanced up at Ichigo, as though curious to see what he’d say as well. 

“What are you doing up here, Hat-and-Clogs? What are you gathering up that only Arrancar can touch?”

“Oh my god,” Uryu breathed, “You’re not making _him_ Soul King, are you? Are you insane? You do realize he actually, legitimately wants to destroy EVERYTHING, right?”

Urahara probably should have looked chagrined. Instead, he looked kind of sad. “Even mostly a corpse, his reiryoku is… well,” Urahara brightened, “Made of the right stuff, as they say! And… there are no other options.”

“Liar,” Real Aizen’s voice boomed out.

Everyone gathered at the dias looked every which way, trying to pin down where Aizen’s voice had come from.

“You couldn’t tell your friend to keep his voice down, could you?” Urahara asked with one of his silly, weird smiles. “My little memory wipe sonic screwdriver won’t work on a crowd this big. Shinigami, too, no less.”

“Anyone but me, eh, Kisuke?” Aizen said. This time Real Aizen and Fake Aizen were superimposed as he walked down from the dias. People gasped when he materialized beside them. Several even managed to summon Kidō or pull a zanpakutō, but Aizen deflected them like he was swatting flies. 

Several feet from Urahara, however, Real Aizen stopped moving, leaving Fake Aizen to close the remaining distance to stand beside Ichigo and Uryu. “You’d rather have the husk of our greatest Quincy enemy as Soul King than me. How delightful. I’m extraordinarily flattered. What is it that terrifies you so much about me, Kisuke? Or is it the destruction of the ‘status quo’ you fear?”

Urahara’s smile was so fake even Ichigo could see right through it. “Ah, you cut me to the quick, Sō-chan.”

Fake Aizen shook his head derisively, as Real Aizen did the same from three feet behind him. “If only I did,” he said lightly, but Ichigo thought he heard some real hurt in Aizen’s tone. “But you really mean to do it, don’t you? How are you planning to sell this to the population? Surely no one will stand for a Quincy on the Soul King’s throne.”

“No one needs to know,” Urahara said cheerfully, “There really are no witnesses to the Soul King’s death. And, Captain-Commander Kyōraku is very, very good at lying. All of this has its reason, all of it has its rhyme. No one even now knows exactly what's happening on that that throne, only the Captain-Commander and I. The rest? It's a need to know basis and they don't need to know.”

Real Aizen took several steps back. Just in time, it seemed, as both Ichigo and Uryu had to jump out of the way of the exploding Kidō net that snaked up out of the ground and caught nothing. Again. Aizen must have felt the rise in reiatsu, and his illusion had saved him again. 

It only took a second before Urahara’s eyes locked on Ichigo. “You’re immune. You see him, don’t you?”

“No.” Even to his own ears Ichigo knew how obvious his lie sounded, so he shrugged, “Okay, yes. But I’m not giving him up, Hat and Clogs. It doesn’t seem right. I mean, he’s on your side. The shinigami side, the Soul Society side, so--I kind of don’t see why I should.”

“You don’t see why you should?” Urahara repeated. Under the shadow of the hat, his eyes remained watchful, wary of Aizen, who, unbeknownst to him was heading away, seemingly looking for something in the ruins. As Aizen’s hidden form passed Grimmjow, Grimmjow’s nose went up and he opened his mouth, like a cat or a snake tasting the air. 

Ichigo willed himself to stay focused on Urahara’s face. Urahara’s gray eyes were narrow, watchful. “Just how long did you spend with Aizen, anyway?”

Ichigo glanced at Uryu and tried to do some mental calculations. “I dunno. A week?”

“Maybe two,” Uryu agreed.

“He makes a mean curry,” Ichigo said.

“Curry. I see,” Urahara said. Blindly looking around, he asked the air, “What exactly are your plans, Sōsuke?”

“Plans?” Aizen laughed. He was far away, almost hidden among the rocks and rubble, but his voice sounded like it was right beside them. “For once, Kisuke, you find me with a very simple plan: to kill Yhwach. However, I find myself stymied in this regard by your Kidō.”

“And after you killed him, what then?” Urahara continued, his eyes still scanning. Weirdly, Ichigo was happy to see Urahara looking in all the wrong directions.

Ichigo chose to look at the dias to keep Urahara off Aizen’s scent. His gut told Ichigo to trust Aizen right now, and, as stupid as that sounded, he was going to do it. Up by the throne, Kyōraku seemed to be issuing orders, maybe still going on with whatever they were doing with the Yhwach goop. 

Listening to all this talk made Ichigo feel uneasy. If the plan was to bind up all of Yhwach, what were they going to do with the parts that lived inside Uryu and himself?

Aizen’s disembodied voice continued, “Once we killed Yhwach, I would have used my reiatsu to hold these wretched worlds together. But, I see I am to be replaced with an even deeper emptiness than that which came before.”

“It’s for the best.” Urahara said.

“Mmmm,” Aizen’s deep voice rumbled. “So you keep saying.”

“A sentient Soul King would ruin everything,” Urahara said. Something in his voice made Ichigo turn his attention away from the dias. There was something about Urahara's expression... Out of the corner of his eye, Ichigo caught sight of Aizen. He'd stopped moving and was pulling something from the rubble that looked like a giant, metal capsule. 

Disembodied Aizen started “Oh?--” but Ichigo shouted over him, “Stop talking. I don’t know how, but he’s homing in on you.”

Urahara who had his eyes closed in concentration, opened one eye to glare at Ichigo. In fact, he used Benihime--who had collapsed back into her cane form--to smack Ichigo on the thigh in admonishment.

Aizen’s dark eyebrows quirked upward, but he managed to keep his lips pressed together. Ichigo saw that one half of one of his legs was free of the Muken bonds. 

“And stop THAT for a minute,” Ichigo said, hoping to convey his meaning without saying anything. “You must be expending huge amounts of spiritual pressure to keep doing THAT.”

Ichigo could see Aizen’s mouth working. He was desperate to explain himself or something. 

“Seriously, shush,” Ichigo took great pleasure in saying again.

If Aizen’s gaze could kill, Ichigo would be a smoldering heap. 

“I don’t know what you think you’re gaining by helping Aizen,” Urahara said with a frustrated sigh and another hard smack to Ichigo’s butt. He pushed his hat down on the top of his head, that way he did sometimes. “All of the Soul Society will band together to bring him down. If you stand between us and him… well, you’ll probably slaughter us all, Ichigo.” The little quirk of a smile was genuine this time, and sort of melancholy. “You’ll have to kill all the people you fought to save. Is that what you want? Is that how this is going to end?”

Ichigo frowned. Fight Rukia? Or Byakuya? Or even someone like Iba? Grimmjow would want to, but Ichigo already knew he couldn’t kill that guy. He couldn’t. None of them. Not after everything they’d been through together.

Hat-and-Clogs knew that about him, too.

“You got me, okay,” Ichigo admitted grumpily. “You know I can’t do that. But, I don’t get it, okay? What the fuck is wrong with giving the throne to Aizen?”

Aizen stopped fiddling with the capsule to look up. 

“You would change everything, wouldn’t you, Sōsuke-kun?” Urahara said, squinting around at the Royal Realm. Not finding a target for his words, Urahara turned back to Ichigo. “It would be chaos. Our system might be imperfect, Mr. Ichigo, but it works. For all that Sōsuke may have told you, it works for most people, most of the time. It’s worked that way for millennia. It can continue to work.”

Aizen couldn’t quite stifle a snort of derision. “Easy to say where you stand, Golden Boy. How was it being coddled by the Shihoin? I can only imagine your hardships, poor thing. However did you survive?” 

Whoa, sarcastic Aizen was sarcastic! He also seemed to be pulling Mayuri’s body out of the weird metal capsule thing, and maybe putting a brain back in? No, that was too surreal, must have been an aftershock of an illusion or something. No way Mayuri had had an actual human brain just tucked into his kosode. Even Mayuri wasn’t that weird.

Aizen continued, “Did you ever live here, I wonder? Signs say ‘yes.’ So there’s some connection for you in the Soul Realm, is there not, Kisuke? This status quo of yours, it’s home, isn’t it?”

Urahara chuckled--well, kind of giggled, but that was Hat-and-Clogs for you. “I love when you make stabbing conjectures in the dark, hoping to strike something. It’s adorable!”

If that was bait, Aizen didn’t rise to it. Instead, he seemed to be shaking Mayuri awake. Ichigo tried to tear his eyes away, but there was something funky about Mayuri. Oh, it was his hat. He didn’t have one. Instead, long dark blue hair swept in front of his eyes almost… attractively.

What, no.

Ichigo shook his head again: there was literally nothing attractive about that monster.

Beside him, Uryu shuddered. 

All their attention had attracted Urahara’s. But, just in time, Aizen pulled up another of his illusions. Suddenly, Aizen’s Muken-wrapped form superimposed itself over stumbling-awake Mayuri. It was kind of interesting because having Mayuri underneath did something to Aizen’s illusion to make it seem more… solid. Which was weird, because even the 'nothing' should work as perfectly as any ‘ _perfect_ hypnosis.’ Maybe the problem wasn't the perfect part, but the hypnosis part. It was like Aizen himself once said, Kyoka Suigetsu could make a grasshopper into a dragon. Sure, it could make something out of nothing, but, maybe, the hypnotized mind latched better when it was focused on something real?

Whatever it was, Mayuri blinking and looking around stunned gave the impression of Real Aizen, as you’d expect him to be after a battle--a little dazed, but miffed as hell.

Maybe that was it. If it was hypnosis and not illusion, the trick was for Aizen to be where and how the subconscious expected him to be. Looking a little damaged, a little angry---

“Finally, he reveals himself,” Urahara breathed. “Kyoka Suigetsu must be at its limit.”

Ichigo gave Urahara a curious glance. Yhwach had said the same exact thing and had been wrong as fuck. 

People must really want to believe Aizen had limits.

When he clearly didn’t.

It was a weird mistake for Urahara to make, but maybe that was the nature of hope. After all, why even try to fight Aizen if you don’t believe he can be defeated somehow, right? Even an insanely smart guy like Urahara must occasionally be governed by subconscious impulses, like hope and desire.

Was that what had made Aizen so lonely? The knowledge that people secretly desired him to fail? And knowing that, to use his greatest power, he had to capitalize on the worst, subconscious impulses people had?

And watching them fall for it, greedily, every time?

Because sure enough, Urahara flashed forward. Real Aizen was opening his mouth, but Ichigo was already after them, using a bankai burst to make himself two seconds faster than Urahara. Even so, Ichigo barely got Zangetsu out and up in time to stop Benihime. As their blades clashed Ichigo could hear her anguished, desperate cry for blood. Urahara’s hand touched Ichigo’s chest, and Ichigo could feel the brief buzz of Kidō--which instinctually triggered his own newly-honed Kidō defense.

Urahara jumped back, shocked.

“Just how long were you with Aizen?” he asked again, actual concern creeping in under his usual breezy demeanor.

Aizen/Mayuri chuckled. Though Real Mayuri screeched “What is the meaning of this? How dare you attack me, you cretin! Can’t you see I’m injured?” Aizen’s voice came out of his mouth saying, “Long enough, Kisuke.”

Real Aizen seemed intent on putting distance between himself and Urahara, so as soon as it was clear that his Illusion was functioning, he flashed backwards to the capsule. He pulled out the brain again, and tucked it against his chest. As he did, an image of Mayuri wrapped itself around Real Aizen. 

“Ichigo,” Urahara said imploringly. “No good will come from standing between us and Aizen. You know that.”

“Aizen?” Mayuri repeated at Ichigo’s back. It kind of made Ichigo’s skin crawl to know that Mayuri was standing there, but he hoped that maybe Urahara could sense his discomfort--and misinterpret it.

Fuck damn. He was becoming as manipulative as Aizen.

Uryu flashed--or Quincy shunpo’d, whatever it was called--to where they stood. “Listen to Urahara, Ichigo.”

Behind him, Mayuri tisked his tongue. “Did you fools remove me from my healing chambers too early or am I dreaming this ridiculous scenario?” Aizen’s voice said, instead, “I would prefer you not step aside, Kurosaki.”

“But, Uryu,” Ichigo said, trying to ignore the headache he was getting from trying to keep real and illusion separate. “Isn’t it better to let Aizen take the throne? I mean, if they have to seal up all of Yhwach, what are they going to do with us? We’ve got Yhwach in us.”

“I have a solution for that,” Aizen-as-Mayuri said, feigning a wobbling emergence from the capsule. Of course, it came out more like, “Only an idiot wouldn’t know the solution to such a simple problem. I’m surprised at you, Urahara. It’s your Vizard technology, after all--not that it’s superior to my own thinking, mind you.”

Urahara tipped his hat, “Ah, but it is dangerous, Captain Kurotsuchi!”

“Danger-smanger,” Fake Mayuri snarled. “You’re just too cowardly to think of it! Leave it to me, Urahara.”

Real Mayuri muttered, “Ah, one of those dreams where I see myself outside of myself.” So, Fake-Aizen said, “Don’t trust them, Kurosaki.”

“I kind of don’t?” Ichigo agreed. “I mean, are you seriously suggesting that Uryu trust the guy who--”

“Tortured and murdered my people,” Uryu finished what Ichigo wasn’t entirely comfortable saying. “You’re out of your mind, Mr. Urahara, if you think I’m going under the knife with that guy.”

Ichigo had to take a moment to appreciate just how good Uryu was at this. He was really convincing. Ichigo totally heard the disgust and loathing Uryu felt towards Mayuri. But then, maybe Ichigo shouldn’t be so impressed--clearly it was one of Uryu’s skill sets. He’d just spent months in the enemy’s camp, pretending to be on their side. 

Everyone had believed it. Even Ms. Inoue, who always wanted to trust in people’s good side.

“We have a bigger problem to deal with first,” Urahara said, making his move. There was some kind of Kidō push that sent Ichigo stumbling off to the side. In a second, Urahara was after Fake-Aizen/Actually Mayuri. Real Mayuri, even injured, went to block each blow. In a way, Ichigo had to admire Aizen’s thinking. Mayuri was smart and devious--so he fought a lot like Aizen would.

The weird part was listening to Mayuri yelling all sorts of profanities and questions and having it all come out of his mouth in pat Aizen-type cool, calm, collected phrases, like, “You’ll never defeat me. I’m too powerful for you now.”

Ichigo couldn’t stop a glance at the Real Aizen, now only barely visible under his guise as Mayuri. Aizen quirked a single eyebrow as if to say, “It’s what they expect of a villain.”

Fuck.

Aizen really was a master when it came to manipulation. Especially since Ichigo watched Aizen intercede with high level Kidō on Mayuri’s behalf. Clever. Because that way the signature was ‘right.’

Just when Ichigo thought maybe he ought to jump in as a last ditch effort to save Fake-Aizen, Kyōraku’s beefy hand closed on his shoulder. “I wouldn’t, son. Don’t make me go bankai. I’m too tired, and this is one drama I’d like to see end happily.”

Whatever the fuck that meant.

But Ichigo made a show of putting away Zangetsu. Just as everyone--everyone left in the Soul Realm--including Grimmjow and a bunch of the Fullbring, used their combined strength to immobilize Fake-Aizen/Actually-Mayuri. It was kind of good timing because Mayuri had been reaching for that creepy zanpakutō of his and gods only knew how Aizen planned to cover-up something like bankai.

So much Kidō slammed to Fake-Aizen/Actually-Mayuri that the ground shook. Ichigo must have tried to take an unconscious step forward in sympathy with Mayuri, because Kyōraku’s hand tightened warningly on his shoulder.

“It’s over,” Kyōraku said solemnly. “I’m sorry, Mr. Ichigo. But, not even Aizen can recover from that.” Especially since Hachi was helping Urahara with the whole black coffin thingie. Meanwhile, Mayuri’s fading screams were coming out as Aizen-threats of ‘One day! You’ll see the errors of your ways! I should be Soul King! Damn you, Kisuke Urahara!”

Huh, no one else noticed how most of these lines were kind of recycled?

Well, it was exactly what Aizen would say, since... he _had_. 

“You did the right thing,” Uryu said, again with that amazingly genuine look in his eye. Uryu Ishida: Master Spy. “I know it was against your nature to stand on the sidelines.”

Oh. It really had been. Should he make some excuse?

Luckily, Captain-Commander Kyōraku made it for him, “We’ve all fallen for him at some point, Mr. Ichigo. He has that effect on people.”

“Not me,” Fake Mayuri/Real Aizen said, which was suddenly massively ironic. Fake Mayuri/Real Aizen came over and made creepy, grabby hands at Uyru, who shrunk away in horror. “Now give me my test subjects! There’s work to be done.” 

Kyōraku’s hand left Ichigo’s shoulder… regretfully? But, Ichigo did notice he let go, anyway. “Keep these boys alive, Captain Kurotsuchi,” Kyōraku said with a wag of his finger, like a father. “I’m counting on you.”

Fake Mayuri rolled his jaundiced eyes. “False parameters like that are a detriment to scientific advancement.” 

Kyōraku pinned Fake Mayuri with a serious glare, “Urahara could do it.”

“Oh, fine, fine!” Mayuri huffed. “Of course I can keep them alive! Do you think I couldn’t? I wasn’t being serious! Pfft! How dare you insinuate that that man is a better scientist than I!?”

“Mmm,” Kyōraku said, turning away then. His pink kimono swirled as he headed back toward the commotion surrounding the entombed Real-Mayuri and the remains of Yhwach.

“Wow, this is really fucked up,” Ichigo muttered once Kyōraku was out of earshot.

“He legit was going to leave me, a Quincy, in Mayuri’s hands,” Uryu said. “That’s just--wow.”

“Indeed,” Aizen agreed, Mayuri’s mouth, but his own voice for Uyru’s benefit. “Welcome to my world.”

“Bizzaro World,” Ichigo muttered.

“You’re the only nerd here that gets that reference, Kurosaki,” Uryu sneered.

“D.C. Comics,” Aizen said, surprising them both. “It’s the opposite world belonging to one of Superman’s enemies, where up is down and everything is contradictory to expectations.” At their continued, open-mouth gape, Aizen shrugged, “I read a lot.”

“Okay…” Ichigo said, not knowing what to say to that, anyway, “So... what now?” 

Aizen crossed Mayuri’s arms. The long fingernail tapped thoughtfully against bicep, making a clicking sound. Which, Ichigo realized, must be what he expected to hear, since all of it was still hypnosis. 

“Well,” Aizen said after a moment’s consideration, “Surely the first order of business will be removing Mayuri to Muken. They’re sure I'm working to undo the Kidō even now, so they’ll do that as soon as possible. As I was able to slip the last of the bonds during their fight with Mayuri, I’m not anticipating any problems. I only pray that Urahara Kisuke does not oversee the process. He’s clever enough to notice that the energy required to seal Mayuri in my place will not equal the amount that is required even to re-seal me. Perhaps, Mr. Ishida could contrive a reason to distract him?”

“Not me?” Ichigo asked. The look they both shot him made Ichigo understand immediately, “Yeah, okay, I’m a crap liar.”

“You really are,” Uryu sniffed, adjusting his glasses.

“Then the next step, I suppose, is to to keep up this little ruse. I can certainly unbind your Quincy energy, Mr. Ishida,” Aizen said. “It won’t kill you, but it will render you powerless.”

“And you left off how painful it is,” Uryu noted. When both Ichigo and Aizen gave him a curious look, he said, “I’ve actually been through something like it before. Fighting that guy,” Uryu pointed in the direction of the black coffin.

“I could contrive to leave you a back door--” Aizen began, but Uryu raised a hand to stop him.

“No,” Uryu said firmly. He hooked a thumb in the direction of the shinigami, “I can’t risk them finding out. Anyway, having met Yhwach? I’m done being a Quincy.”

Ichigo’s stomach dropped a little to hear the finality in Uryu’s voice. Uryu been powerless and had been able to live with it; Ichigo, not so much. He hated himself for saying this, but Ichigo could NOT do helpless. Not again. “I’m not. I need that backdoor.”

Aizen lifted one of Mayuri’s non-existent eyebrows. “You’re tricker, at any rate. At least Urahara understands that your Quinciness is bound to all parts of you. Take one out and they all collapse, like a house of cards. Urahara will want yours sealed. He’s the only one with the skill… unless they trot out the former Kidō Commander they have doing their laundry.”

“Tessai?” Ichigo asked.

Aizen waved him off with a pretty good imitation of Mayuri’s irritation. Either he was good at this mimicking thing or it was another one of those ‘what the subconscious mind expects’ moments. “The ace we have up our sleeve is the hogyoku,” Aizen said, Mayuri’s hand touching the place on his chest where the hogyoku was embedded in Aizen. “With it, we can leave a keyhole in Urahara’s lock.”

“But who holds the key?” Uryu wanted to know.

“Ah, you still don’t trust me, eh, Mr. Ishida?” Aizen’s smirk was creepy on Mayuri’s face. “I will.”

“Whoa, I dunno--” Ichigo started.

“I’ll implant a post-hypnotic suggestion,” Aizen cut him off to explain. “A word will cause the seal to unlock.”

“Okay, but Uryu gets to know the word, too.” Ichigo said.

“Wait,” Uryu said, “Why are you already agreeing to this? It’s a monumentally stupid ide--”

“Deal,” Aizen said over Uryu’s protests. “We should have someone in the Human World who can trigger it. Ah, for that matter, we should give it to Nel as well. That way there’s someone in each of the worlds you might find yourself in.”

“So we should contact the King of Hell, too?” Ichigo smirked. 

“No need,” Aizen said dismissively. “No one who goes there ever gets out.”

“But, I--” Ichigo started, and then stopped. “Yeah. Whatever.”

“Good,” Aizen said, the glee in his voice just a bit too Mayuri-like for comfort. “Let’s get started.”


	6. The Master Plan (tm) Unfolds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aizen-as-Mayuri prepares Uryu for the Letz Stil... until something goes horribly wrong. Or does it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, wow, when the dam breaks, the water kind of rushes out in a hurry. I had intended to write more of my ByaRen soap opera before returning to this, but my Muse had other ideas.
> 
> Also I had to guess at how much time was left in Aizen's sentence. I know 18 months passed after his defeat and the beginning of the Full Bring arc, but time gets kind of murky after that. If someone wants to do the math for me, I'll happily fix it. But, in the meantime, this was my best guess (and of course Aizen knows down to the minute, probably.)
> 
> I also know that ButterflAizen did not have holes; it was an earlier metamorphosis. Ichigo is being a smartass, as usual.
> 
> For the record, I'm completely off-script now. We have left any semblance of canon in the dust.

Ichigo sat on a hard metal exam table in the middle of the Twelfth Division--well, it was hardly the middle of it, actually, since that was still a smoldering hole, but, of course, Mayuri had a whole secret underground layer of labs that pretty much duplicated the ones above it. The room was small, smelled faintly of antiseptic, and there was something that let out a scientific sort of beep every so often over by the opposite door. Ichigo swung his legs, making the paper under his butt crinkle, and frowned at Mayuri.

Fake Mayuri.

Really Aizen.

It was getting harder to see Aizen under it all, actually, and Ichigo found that deeply disturbing.

Fake Mayuri stuck some instrument up to Uryu’s eye and squinted through it. They’d been playing this game of doctor for a while and it was starting to creep Ichigo out. Was Aizen ever going to drop the illusion of being Mayuri? 

“How long is your sentence, anyway?” Uryu asked, after being prodded again.

“Mmm? Why do you ask?” Fake Mayuri at least sounded like Aizen now.

“Because I’m hoping it’s forever,” Uryu said. “I feel like that bastard should pay for what he did to the Quincy.”

Fake Mayuri stepped back from his examination. Adopting a much more Aizen-esque pose, he leaned his butt against the exam table Ichigo sat on and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “18,798 years, three months, and eighteen days remain to be served, provided the current Central 46 has not decided to add more crimes to my name. If it’s any comfort to you, Mr. Ishida, I am certain Captain Kurotsuchi will not survive it with his intellect intact. He was already made insane by his imprisonment in the Maggot’s Nest. The kind of sensory deprivation he’s currently experiencing is difficult for even the soundest of minds to endure.”

Uryu thought about that for a second and said, “Good.”

Mayuri’s/Aizen’s mouth formed a grim line, reminding Ichigo that Aizen had borne that hell for over a year. How had he survived it? No, he’d done more than survived, he’d gotten stronger. Ichigo shook his head in disbelief at it all. Sometimes he thought maybe Renji was right; Aizen was some kind of a _monster_.

With a sigh, Aizen setdown Mayuri’s instrument near Ichigo’s leg. Ichigo resisted the urge to pull himself away. Half the shit in Mayuri’s lab tended to scurry away on its own when abandoned.

“Now that we’re speaking freely,” Aizen said, continuing to use his own voice. “I think giving up your Quincy power is a mistake, Ishida.”

Uryu’s glasses glinted as he shifted to look Aizen/Mayuri in the eye. “Why?”

“You are now, truly, one of a kind.” Aizen/Mayuri gave a dismissive little glance at Ichigo, “Barring whatever this chimera produces, you’re really the only way your people will survive.”

“Uh, not gonna reproduce,” Ichigo said, raising his hand to point at his nose.

“Quincy survival means Yhwach survival,” Uryu ignored Ichigo’s interruption. “Not worth it.”

Mayuri pressed his painted lips together. Did Aizen feel the paint on his skin? No--no, of course, he didn’t, it was only hypnotism making Ichigo think he could reach out and smear it. 

“Your intent is noble, if unfounded,” Aizen said. “Yhwach will survive in Ichigo, regardless of your sacrifice.”

Uryu chewed his lip, considering. His fingers unconsciously fiddled with the Quincy cross that dangled from his wrist. 

Watching that made Ichigo say, “Being Quincy as always defined who you are, Uryu.”

“That, Kurosaki,” Uryu sniffed, “Is the problem.”

“Ah,” Aizen said in understanding. “Very well, we will rid you of this troublesome identity.”

“Speaking of identities,” Ichigo said, shifting to try to peer into Real Aizen’s face, only to be frustrated. He was under there, wasn’t he? “You really going to be Mayuri forever?”

Mayuri’s jaundiced eyes glanced at the ceiling’s corners, which, at first, didn’t make sense to Ichigo, until Aizen said, “Given the amount of surveillance cameras in the Twelfth, forever becomes a dicey proposition. Though some of that can be mitigated with costuming.”

“Wait, did you just say costume? Are you cosplaying Mayuri?” Ichigo had to ask. No wonder the paint had seemed so real! Real Aizen was wearing it, as well. No one had been surprised when Mayuri had huffed off to change clothes immediately after their arrival. Of course, Ichigo knew that Real Aizen was butt-ass naked, but Fake Mayuri had also lost his hat and had had Nemu’s brain to deal with. Yeah--it turned out the brain had been real. Apparently, Aizen had also used the excuse to paint himself up in some kind of cosplay.

Which was kind of hilarious.

No, it was TOTALLY hilarious.

“Kyoka Suigetsu is perfect hypnotism, not illusion,” Aizen said simply. “Cameras are machines. Machines can not be hypnotized.”

“You are!” Ichigo hopped up to gleefully point at Aizen. “You’re fucking cosplaying Mayuri right now!”

Aizen sighed. “What I am doing, Kurosaki Ichigo, is evading capture.”

“Cosplay!” Ichigo insisted.

“Very well. And cosplay,” Aizen finally admitted, much to Ichigo’s satisfaction.

“Aren’t you at least five inches taller than Mayuri?” Uryu asked. Ichigo did not what to know why Uryu knew exactly how tall Mayuri was. Probably post-traumatic stress did that for your memory.

“ _Perfect_ hypnotism, Mr, Ishida,” Aizen said, straightening up to return the weird little exam tool to its spot on a nearby surgical tray. “I’m only… ‘cosplaying’,” he said, shooting Ichigo a very Aizen ‘there, are you satisfied’ look over his shoulder, “for the machines. I’m counting on the human Soul watching those machines not to be looking too closely. Unfortunately, I am surrounded by scientists who are used to following up on minor inconsistencies. If someone notices the height difference on tape--well, the bonus of being a madman is that I can merely screech that there must be something wrong with the surveillance mechanism and have them summarily destroyed. Eventually, I will replace the all cameras with my own, as well as introduce the idea that Mayuri has engaged in yet another body modification.”

“Huh,” Uryu said with a snort. “Clever.”

A little quirk of a smile passed over Mayuri’s lips. What had been handsome on Aizen was creepy as fuck on Mayuri. That thought prompted Ichigo to point out, “It must be tough not to be able to charm anyone anymore, though.”

“It’s a disadvantage,” Aizen agreed. “However, of all of the Gotei captains available, Kurotsuchi is, at least, a psychopath. I won’t have to pretend to be a decent human being.”

“Um, that’s usually a problem?” Ichigo asked.

Both Uryu and Aizen gave him the ‘D’uh’ look simultaneously.

Yeah, okay, maybe it was kind of obvious that Aizen _was_ some kind of sociopath, but it was a little surprising to hear Aizen admit to it. 

But, Aizen was continuing, “Besides, the captain’s work closely mirrors my own interests, and, for some unknown reason, Kurotsuchi has been given a carte blanche by the Gotei and Central to conduct torturous ‘experiments’ on Souls both living and dead. He’s allowed to maim, murder, and wipe out entire Rukongai villages with exactly zero repercussions. In fact, all his work is sanctioned and, even, approved of. Frankly, I couldn’t have dreamed for a more perfect position for someone like myself.”

Whelp, that was a chilling thought. Ichigo suddenly regretted helping Aizen. AT ALL.

Uryu looked similarly stricken.

Aizen had turned around and noticed their reaction to his words. He looked them each in the eye in turn. “Kurosaki Ichigo, Ishida Uryu, I can see that it has finally dawned on you that you’ve made a deal with the devil. There’s no escaping that fact for either of you. Nor should you fool yourselves into thinking I will not use Kurotsuchi’s position to press my own agenda. But, remember two things. One,” Aizen held up one of Mayuri’s creepy, pale fingers, “The man I replace did all the things I will do, gleefully. If you judge me harshly, so be it. But, he is the same as I, possibly worse.” The second finger went up--the one with the extra gross long fingernail, painted black, “Two, devil though I may be, I will never allow the destruction of the Soul Society. That has never been my goal. If it were, I would have joined Yhwach when he asked for my help and you would all be dead.”

“Well, that’s comforting,” Ichigo grumped, crossing his arms in front of his chest and pulling a face.

“Not,” Uryu added, as if it were necessary.

“You can waste time worrying about what I’ll get up to, if you like,” Aizen said. With a little shrug, he turned back to the medical equipment. “But a smarter person might wonder how it is that someone like Mayuri was considered a ‘good guy’ and myself a ‘villain.’ You heard Urahara Kisuke’s words with your own ears. The Soul Society is comfortable with its injustices. They want their corrupt system to continue. They don’t care what it costs, or if it means putting a Quincy’s corpse on the Empty Throne. They’re rebuilding Sokyoku Hill even now. How lovely it will be to wake up each morning, once again, to see the execution ground towering over us all, a silent reminder of what this place really values. It will only be a matter of time before Central 46 returns to the business of crucifying its enemies there, while not one Soul protests, much less glances up to notice. All the work you’ve done, Kurosaki Ichigo, to change their minds and open their hearts has come to naught. It’s a sad state of affairs, when _I_ am the Soul Society’s last and greatest hope.”

Ichigo’s gut did all sorts of weird things listening to Aizen’s speech and he didn’t like how any of it made him feel. He wanted to argue, but the bit about Sokyoku Hill stopped him short. Ichigo couldn’t pretend he was comfortable with the same system that was going to execute Rukia--without even a trial--because she helped his family NOT get eaten by a Hollow. Like, anywhere else, that would have been one of those ‘just cause’ or ‘self-defense’ sorts of things, and she’d have gotten off with a warning or something.

Yeah, okay, maybe the whole thing was orchestrated by this guy--Aizen, but the thing about it? No one Ichigo ran across ever said, “Wow, this is sure unusual! Normally, people get fair trials.” Nope. It was just like Aizen said. His fucking evil plan worked because this was the reality Shinigami lived with everyday: people got executed unjustly all the time. When it was happening to Rukia, it didn’t stand out, because it was commonplace.

THAT was seriously fucked up.

And Byakuya had been like, “But if we don’t uphold laws, we’ll be lawless.” Which would be fine: IF THE LAWS WERE JUST.

At least he’d come around on that. Kinda.

When neither Ichigo nor Uryu could come up with anything to say out loud, Aizen-as-Mayuri let out a small breath. “Now then, Mr. Ishida. I pronounce you in good enough health to survive the Letz Stil, if that remains your choice. Third Seat-Acting Lieutenant Akon has assured me that the chamber is equipped to capture and contain what is lost. All you have to do is step through,” he gestured broadly at a door that looked more suited to a submarine, with its heavy seals and pressure lock.

Uryu stood up and adjusted his Sternritter uniform. He looked down at the crisp lines and cut of the suit and let out a little sigh. “I am going to miss Quincy fashion. The whole angelic Nazi thing was a good aesthetic.”

Ichigo put a hand on Uryu’s narrow shoulder and gave it a quick squeeze. “You know, when you put it like that, dude, good riddance, huh?”

Uryu managed a laugh. “Yeah, probably.”

“Besides, you can sew yourself something new,” Ichigo reminded him. “Make your own aesthetic.”

“You know, I was thinking that with my inheritance, I might go into fashion design. Maybe go to art school.”

“Hey, that’s a good id--wait,” Ichigo’s heart made a low thump against his chest. “Inheritance?”

Uryu gave Ichigo a sad side-eye. “Ryuuken didn’t like being a Quincy, but he was fullblood, Ichigo. If Yhwach died; he died with him. That’s just how it works. Aizen wasn’t kidding around. I was only spared because I was in some place out of time. I really am the last one, now. Or… you will be once I do this thing.”

Ichigo blinked. All this time Uryu had been acting so cool--and his dad was dead. “But… are you sure he’s---I mean, my dad was with him, right?”

A stab of abject pity crossed Uryu’s face. “Your dad is a pretty good guy, Ichigo, no doubt about it. But there’s one thing we know about Isshin. He can’t stop Auswählen. Or he’d have done it for your mom.”

Ouch.

Uryu didn’t give Ichigo time to reaction any more to that. He just walked up to the door and let Mayuri/Aizen open it for him. He stepped through into what looked like pitch darkness. The door closed behind him with a thump and a hiss, like the sound of the last breath of a death rattle.

Ichigo slumped to the floor. It was all too much. 

Aizen was uncustomarily silent. After sealing the door behind Uryu, he occupied himself with some kind of computations on a computer near the door Uryu had walked through. Maybe he was watching over the proceedings, but, whatever it was, it meant Ichigo was left alone to his own thoughts.

He kind of wanted to cry.

Ryuuken had always been kind of a twat, but--fuck, he was kind of an uncle or something and Ichigo had never had a chance to even get to know him before… before Yhwach killed him. Ichigo thumped his fist into his chest hard enough to hurt. At least he understood this part of what Ishida was doing. Right now, Ichigo wanted to reach in and rip out that part of him that contained that bastard and kill him--twice. At least. For murdering his mom and his uncle and… all the fucking Quincy, even the ones Ichigo hated.

“Your friend’s father lives within you,” Mayuri-with-Aizen’s voice said quietly. “Your mother, too.” 

“But they’re still dead.”

Aizen made a little soft noise. With his back to Ichigo is was easier to see Real Aizen underneath, now he knew to look for how the shoulders were broader and several inches above the Mayuri image. “Death is a funny thing to discuss with a shinigami,” Aizen reminded him. “Souls are our business.”

“Yeah, but I can’t ever talk to them again,” Ichigo started. When he felt his voice hitch and start to break, he abruptly switched tack. Fuck if he’d cry in front of Aizen, “And where even the fuck is MY dummo-dad in all this?”

“Kurosaki Isshin?” Aizen said, turning slightly to look over his shoulder. “On walkabout from what I’ve been able to ascertain.” 

“Walkabout?” Ichigo repeated stupidly. “The fuck? Are you saying he just fucking left? Took off on some kind of existential navel-gazing road trip?”

“I suspect watching another Quincy be taken from him while he was helpless to do anything about it may have been difficult” Aizen said plainly. 

Ichigo flinched a little, but his jaw flexed. “Whatever. It’s fucking selfish is what it is.”

Swiveling the chair around, Fake Mayuri turned to look at where Ichigo sat, slumped on the floor. “It is. Phenomenally, so. But, it seems to me that fathers are often the source of pain for sons. You have my sympathies.”

Sympathy? Sympathy from the devil! Ichigo couldn’t help but chuckle a little, “Look at you, all pretending to be decent. I thought you didn’t have any empathy.”

Aizen-as-Mayuri stood up slowly. Ichigo’s impulse was to back away, but then he noticed that there was no real malice in Aizen’s movements, just a sort of preparation…? Steeling himself? Ichigo watched as Fake Mayuri reached out and lightly caressed the hilt of Ashisogi Jizō where it hung obscenely in the front of his obi, at the same time Real Aizen touched the ribbons of Kyoka Suigetsu at his side. “All shinigami,” Aizen said, “are born missing something. What I am missing, Kyoka Suigetsu completes. They are the moon; I am the mirror. My soul: cold, empty, a hard, unyielding surface upon which light refracts, but can not penetrate. Together, we are the moon’s reflection upon that mirror. And what is empathy, really? It’s the ability to reflect what another feels.” He stopped himself then, and frowned. Weirdly, Mayuri’s hand did a fluttering little dismissive wave, while Real Aizen just sucked in his lower lip. “Well, I suppose real empathy is more than that, but, mimicry is the best we can achieve. To be fair to Kyoka Suigetsu, I am, as I discovered, far more deeply flawed than most shinigami.” He pointed to spots, in line down his chest, as he said: “Three holes.”

“Yeah, hard to forget the butterfly monster,” Ichigo said, pulling himself up off the floor, finally. “I remember.”

“Ah, yes, you were there,” Aizen said, as if genuinely surprised. Like Ichigo hadn’t been one of the ONLY people left standing at that point. “The point is, I… understand your plight, even if only intellectually. I have--” now both Fake Mayuri and Aizen made a sort of desperate, reaching gesture-- “feelings. I just--”

Whatever else he was going to say was lost in the thundering sound of klaxons that erupted. Aizen spun back to his computer, fingers flying frantically over the keys. Ichigo rushed over to peer over his shoulder--the real one, which meant going up on tiptoes. 

“Is Uryu okay?”

“He’s fine,” Aizen assured him. “The problem is that he’s overloading the system. Apparently, someone forgot to mention his little upgrade to Sternritter ‘A.’”

“Oh, yeah, he got some new superpower too.”

“'Anthesis,' yes, I was hoping to trick him into using it at one point,” Aizen said, like that wasn’t a whole story in and of itself. Quite deliberately, Aizen’s fingers stopped moving and he stood up. “Brace yourself. A containment breach is imminent.” 

“What?” Aizen’s tone had been so calm, Ichigo looked around incredulous. “Wait, you mean this whole place is going to blow?”

“I would suggest a high-level kekai.”

“Do I know how to make a shield yet?” Ichigo hated how squeaky he sounded.

Unsure of his options, Ichigo powered up to bankai-level figuring he’d just try to weather the explosion the usual way--brute force. Before he could say the words to go full-on bankai, however, Aizen’s arm flashed out and tucked him up close. Aizen turned on his heels, shifting his body slightly, so that they were almost huddled together in a hug. He lifted an arm. No chant--just power, flowing. In a second, they were surrounded by a brilliant green. The intense pressure of the barrier hummed against Ichigo’s reiatsu. 

When the wall blew, he watched the concrete and rebar and wires and… _everything_ instantly atomized when it came in contact with Aizen’s shield, his raw power.

It was… terrifying.

Breathtaking.

And Ichigo’s stupid-ass heart was kind of going doki-doki at the thrill of it, even though he was pretty annoyed to be in the princess-rescue position.

Then, just as suddenly, it was over. Aizen’s shield dropped, leaving Ichigo like a physical thing. Just as physically, Aizen flung Ichigo from him, hard enough to make Ichigo stumble over a piece of wall. Aizen switched into full-on Fake-Mayuri mode raging at the machines and ‘idiot’ subordinates. Dust filled the air, alarms made it impossible to hear, but Ichigo could just barely make out Uryu wobbling, unsteadily in a shaft of sunlight. 

Scrambling to his feet, Ichigo managed to catch Uryu just before he collapsed. Yeah, this felt more natural: cradling someone else protectively, lowering them carefully to the floor. “Uryu! You okay?”

One side of Uryu’s glasses were cracked, but he squinted at Ichigo up through the shattered lenses. Reaching up, Uryu clutched the silks of Ichigo’s kosode. “It’s not finished. I can still feel--”

The smell of plum blossoms filled the air and Ichigo sensed a burst of Kidō. Uryu’s eyes rolled up into his head and he… fell asleep?

Ichigo spun his head around just in time to see the ghostly image of Real Aizen underneath the Mayuri illusion dropping his hand. What the fuck? Had Aizen just put the whammy on Uryu? 

Leaping to his feet, Ichigo made a beeline for Mayuri/Aizen. Mayuri’s underlings scattered at the look in Ichigo’s eyes before he pushed Aizen up against the wall, “What the fuck did you just do?”

What was weird was that Real Aizen had been facing him, and Fake Mayuri hadn’t. Ichigo could see a kind of overlay to his own actions, where he spun the shorter Mayuri around and balled his fists into the guy’s collar. Meanwhile, he really had his palm pressed flat against Aizen’s chest.

Ignoring all the headache-inducing double vision was hard. Was this how things looked to Aizen? It was fucked up. With his added frustration, Ichigo pushed hard on Aizen’s chest again, and demanded, “What the living fuck did you do to Uryu?”

“Get your hands off me, fool! I have things to do! Look at my destroyed equipment! Think of the data!” Mayuri’s voice ranted, while Aizen’s voice calmly explained: ““Hakufuku. A sleep spell. I can’t have him talking right now, not if he’s going to keep his Quincy powers.”

“Keep his powers? But... Uryu said he was done being Quincy,” Ichigo asked, but heard his own voice say something else entirely, like, “Help my friend now.”

“Sometimes people need to be saved from their own stupidity, Kurosaki. Losing a Vollständig that powerful is a mistake I cannot allow Ishida to make,” Aizen said plainly. Ichigo tuned out the simultaneous Fake Mayuri’s squawking--something about precious data being more important that some Quincy’s miserable life.

“This explosion, this whole thing, it was down to you,” Ichigo realized, letting go of Aizen in his shock. “‘Someone’ didn’t forget to tell Mayuri’s people about Uryu’s ‘A’ status, you left out that information on purpose. You knew this place couldn’t handle the overload”

Fake Mayuri’s body slipped out from under Ichigo and started running around and ranting, leaving Real Aizen remaining in front of Ichigo. Real Aizen might be cosplaying, but he looked nothing like Mayuri. Sure, his face was painted and his hair covered in that ridiculous hat, but the chestnut brown eyes that stared back at Ichigo burned with a cold fire that could only belong to Aizen Sōsuke. 

“Exactly right. And in doing so, I have single-handedly saved the Quincy race,” Aizen said. “And yet there should still be plenty of ‘essence’ contained in the equipment to fool the Gotei into believing the Quincy has been neutralized. Eventually, your friend will thank me.”

“Eventually? Okay, wow, you really do have a problem with consent,” Ichigo said, jabbing a finger into Aizen’s painted face. Because, okay, Ichigo hadn't liked that Uryu had decided to do either, but that wasn't the point. “This was Uryu’s decision. You don’t get to make that for him.”

“And yet, I just did,” Aizen pointed out.

“Yeah, you did!” Ichigo shouted in exasperation. “Don’t you see how wrong that is?”

“It’s pointless to argue,” Aizen said. “Our moral codes will never align. You go fuss over your friend and be angry about his ‘consent.’ Leave the larger picture to me. I have the future of the universe in mind, Kurosaki Ichigo. Consent is a trifling thing in comparison.”

“Oh my god,” Ichigo said, feeling his shoulders slump in defeat. “I can’t believe I made a deal with you. What the fuck did I do?”

“Saved the Quincy legacy for one,” Aizen said. 

“And what about Yhwach? Part of what Uryu wanted was to see that bastard contained and destroyed. Now what?”

Aizen’s eyebrow raised under a thick layer of white make-up. He glanced upward through the ragged hole blasted in the ceiling, as though trying to see the Royal Realm from here. “It’s not stable. Containing a Quincy, much less the Quincy overlord with Kidō is a losing proposition. Even ‘dead,’ Yhwach will siphon the reishi. It’s what your kind does. As weak as he is, and given how little both you and Ishida carry inside you, it will take thousands of years before their mockery of the Soul King becomes too unstable to contain. They’ll reinforce it a few times, chase down stray bits and re-bind them, but it will continue to degrade. Two--maybe three thousand years is all I’ll have to wait before I can ascend to the throne.”

Ichigo had to admire Aizen’s complete single-mindedness. It was a hell of a long game. In the meantime, for apparently thousands of years, the Soul Society would just be humming along, doing it’s own thing as normal.

Rubbing his face with his hand, Ichigo tried to decide if it was okay to let him have at it. What was the harm?

He honest to god couldn’t think of any good reason and that kind of scared the shit out of him.

Aizen getting his goal.

Aizen wins.

That was bad, wasn’t it?!

Plus wasn’t there something Aizen had said when they first arrived in Hueco Mundo? Ichigo pulled his hand from his eyes and glanced up at Aizen. “I thought you said you couldn’t do it--that you didn’t have all the right parts or something to become Soul King.”

Aizen’s mouth quirked up in a little grimace of a smile. “I have at least a thousand years to rectify that, and,” he lifted his hands to broadly gesture at the Twelfth Division, “an entire research and development facility in which to conduct my experiments.”

Oh, well, shit, wasn’t that handy?

“This is such a bad idea,” Ichigo muttered.

“On the contrary,” Aizen replied, “It’s one of my better ones.”


	7. The End is a Beginning... Except When it Isn't.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything seems to be wrapping up. The big question is: what is Ichigo supposed to do now?

Ichigo really wanted to go check in with Rukia and see how Renji was recovering, but he didn’t feel comfortable leaving Uryu alone until he woke up. He didn’t think Aizen would do anything more to Uryu, but--well, maybe it was knowing just how much Aizen had won that kept Ichigo nailed to the spot on the floor beside Uryu’s unconscious body. 

The Twelfth Division was eerily efficient. They pulled the bodies of their colleagues from the wreckage, like it was no big deal, like it was something they did every day. Which, given this creepy-ass, volatile place, maybe it was. 

Aizen-as-Mayuri bustled around screaming at people for not doing their jobs fast enough and for just being morons. Unsurprisingly, Aizen was good at this play-acting thing--though Ichigo figured mostly he just had to sit back and let Kyoka Suigetsu fix any mistakes. Or people’s own brains fixed them... or their subconscious assumptions or… however the fuck hypnotism worked.

Someone had gently taken Uryu’s glasses from him in order to fix the broken lens, and so Ichigo stared down at a vaguely unfamiliar face. It was obviously still Uryu, but the glasses were so much who he was that it was like looking at someone else. Had his features always been so long and sharp? Uryu was a lot prettier without the glasses, almost Byakuya-level pretty. It was all Ichigo could do not to smooth the inky black hair from his face. It was nice to have gotten closer during their time in Hueco Mundo, but, in a way, it only underscored what a shit friend Ichigo had been. There was so much Ichigo didn’t even know about Uryu. And now… now Ryuuken was gone….

A loud bustle distracted Ichigo from his thoughts. The guy with the weird horns and shaggy hair was breathlessly running up to Aizen-as-Mayuri and saying, “I’m sorry, Taicho. I couldn’t stop him--”

“Him” turned out to be the Captain-Commander Kyōraku who strode in with a flourish of pink kimono. Ichigo half-expected some deep belly chuckling or some admonishment not to be so formal, but Kyōraku’s face was so serious Ichigo found himself standing up, half-worried Kyōraku had seen through Aizen’s disguise.

Aizen however was completely unfazed. “Your partner is fine,” he snapped. “The concealment chamber is meters from here. Besides, if your little god had escaped again, we’d have much bigger problems.”

Little god? Partner?

“You’ve checked on Jũshirō? You’re certain?” Kyōraku’s deep voice rumbled in anxious demand.

Ichigo scratched his head, wishing for once he wasn’t so crap at names--until it hit him: “Ukitake? Captain Ukitake is alive?”

“Barely,” Aizen-as-Mayuri said. “It might have been helpful to let your chief science officer know that you had a god capable of holding the Soul Throne tucked up your sleeve!”

Now Kyōraku relaxed into a chuckle, “What, and spoil the surprise?”

Mayuri made some unhappy clucking noises. Aizen, meanwhile, just stared at Kyōraku kind of like he wanted to punch that smile off his face. With a sigh, Aizen/Mayuri handed off the tool he’d been using to examine the damage to a randomly passing Twelfth Division minion in a lab coat. “You might as well come with me to check on him,” he said to Kyōraku. “I don’t suppose we should talk about certain complications in public.” 

Ichigo raised his eyebrows meaningfully at Aizen. Aizen pursed his lips, and, while Mayuri started nattering on about the explosion and what it cost him and inconvenient love affairs between captains, said, “Mimi-Hagi was entangled with Yhwach. There are concerns that Ukitake has been infected with Quincy-ness. Captain Ukitake already has antibodies--much like your own. As Mayuri, I have to act as though all of this is a surprise, but I have long known that any piece of the Soul King must be part Quincy. Ukitake has been a hybrid for centuries. Puts his ability to absorb and transform reiatsu into a certain perspective, doesn’t it?”

Did it? Ichigo just nodded like he understood. No one had asked him, but he said, “I’m just going to hang with Uryu until he wakes up, then I’m going to go see how Renji is.”

Kyōraku tipped his hat as he followed Mayuri out. “Abarai seems to be healing well. Your friend Ms. Inoue’s powers are miraculous.”

Aizen made a little noise, which he covered with a “Miraculous? They’re unheard of! You should let me experiment on her!”

“Now, now,” Kyōraku chuckled wagging a finger. “Focus on Jūshirō.”

“Fine, fine, but you’ll let me have the girl eventually?”

“We were seeing Jūshirō.”

Mayuri tisked irritatedly and then headed for the door again, “Right.”

Should Ichigo be creeped out that Kyōraku hadn’t said “no” immediately? He just shook his head. Aizen was right. The sense of justice in this place was completely messed up, and Mayuri clearly was seen as some kind of favorite psycho.

With a sigh, he settled down to wait until Uryu woke up.

#

Akon had returned with Uryu’s glasses by the time he started to stir. Ichigo held out the glasses to fumbling hands. 

“Did I fall asleep... on the floor?” Uryu asked. Sitting up, he adjusted his frames and then swept a hand through his hair. Concrete dust drifted down like dander.

“Nah, Aizen put the whammy on you,” Ichigo said. He hopped to his feet and stretched out a hand to help Uryu up.

For a moment, Uryu looked like he wouldn’t accept help, but when his legs wobbled a little, he took it. Once on his feet, Uryu adjusted his uniform sending more dust to the floor. He touched the center of his chest as if feeling for something there. “Damn it,” he whispered. “I’m still Quincy.”

“I’m sorry,” Ichigo said. “Aizen wouldn’t let it happen. He likes your Schrift or your Volsta…” Ichigo fumbled over the awkward German sounds, “... your superpower too much, I guess.”

“Bastard,” Uryu spat.

That was true more ways than one, if Aizen wasn’t lying about his past. But what could Ichigo say? They stood together awkwardly in the center of the busy… crater, that was quickly beginning to look like a lab again. “The Leitz or whatever, it’s a Quincy technique right? If you really want to get rid of your power you just have to find another way to do it.”

“I’m pretty sure my grandfather said that glove of his was one-of-a-kind,” Uryu said, slapping the last of the dust from his pants. 

“Am I supposed to know about the glove thing?” Ichigo wondered. It was bad enough he’d never really talked to Uryu about stuff; did he forget important shit too?

“No,” Uryu said. “No one was there but me and Mayuri. Oh, and Nemu, I guess.”

Nemu. The brain in a vat. Ichigo glanced around the Twelfth in disgust. “Let’s get out of here.”

#

As they walked down the twisted streets of the Seireitei toward where Renji was recovering at the Fourth, Ichigo filled Uryu in on all the latest developments, including--maybe, probably...okay, like, exactly--how they might have let Aizen win.

Uryu didn’t react quite how Ichigo expected. He just shrugged. “We’ll all be dead by then, Kurosaki.”

“Will we?” Ichigo asked sincerely, as he kicked at a loose stone on the street. “I mean, if Quincy get reabsorbed by Yhwach, won’t we be… that?” 

Uryu squinted at Ichigo through his glasses, and made this great show of cleaning them on his cape. “I’m pretty sure when you die, Yhwach will die.”

“Huh?”

“Hollows are poisonous to Quincy,” Uryu said, putting his glasses back on. “If Aizen’s right, and you’re all bound up ‘tight’”--nerd actually made the air quotes with his fingers--”that means whatever Quincy is left in you is impossible to separate from the Hollow part and Yhwach will swallow the bitter pill of poison and that’ll be it.”

Ichigo tugged at his ear, trying to track all this. “Aizen seemed to think he’d have a thousand years. Not… 70.” If he lived that long.

“Maybe Aizen forgot about your Hollow side.” Uryu said with a sniff as he pushed forward at a faster pace. “I never do.”

#

When Ichigo and Uryu got to Renji’s hospital ward, the room was crowded. Spotting Ichigo, Renji bellowed from his bed, “Oi, Ichigo! Tell ‘em! I totally kicked Yhwach ass!”

Chad, Rukia, and Orihime looked to Ichigo to confirm, but Ichigo was struck dumb by the sight of Renji. Or rather, his… hair. He had so fucking much of it! It wasn’t in it’s usual ponytail top-knot thing. Instead it was loose and it was everywhere. Blood-red crimson locks flowed nearly to his waist. And, and… his shirt was off and there were so many dark lines of tattoos… 

_Yep, definitely bi/pan-affectional/attracted_ , Ichigo thought, trying to tear his eyes away. 

Rukia smacked Renji’s head, “I knew it couldn’t be true! You never win a fight.”

“I didn’t say I won it,” Renji grumped, crossing his arms in front of his chest. The movement made the tattoos jump in a way that was super-distracting, especially since the covers shifted and it looked like the lines on his abs went all the way down…

“Wow, just how many tattoos do you have?” Ichigo asked.

This question made the girls giggle and Renji’s cheeks get all flushed. From where he leaned against the wall, Chad just smiled slightly and said, “Byakuya asked the same thing.”

“Yeah, well it’s…. I mean, you look… Huh,” Ichigo said, running out of words and starting to feel his own cheeks heat. Closing his eyes, he shook his head, clearing off the shock at all the naked flesh and ink. Why did people always have to get naked? Ichigo opened his eyes again and tried to concentrate on Renji’s face, even though that was hard with all that amazing hair. “So, yeah, anyway, I’m glad you’re okay.” 

“Weird,” Rukia muttered from where she sat on Renji’s cot. Her face was screwed up in a funny frown. She looked at Orihime who sat on the other side, “Sado’s right. Nii-sama was exactly the same. Like, same odd stuttering and everything.”

“Except he ran away,” Orihime pointed out with another little giggle. “Like, he couldn’t stand another minute in the same room with all the--” she waved her hand at Renji’s body, “--Renji.”

“Yeah, who knew I was so fucking hot?” Renji acknowledged solemnly, like it was some kind of a curse. He gestured down at his chest, his eyes wide, like he’d never noticed the interlocking designs on broad trim chest either.

“Oh my god,” Ishida breathed with a roll of his eyes. Pulling a stool from one of the more modern bits of equipment, he perched on it. “As if, Abarai.”

“Clearly, the sight of me half-naked reduces men to stuttering goo-heaps,” Renji pointed out.

“Shut up,” Ichigo said, coming closer to stand behind Uryu. “I’m not gooey for you, you dip.”

“I dunno, man,” Renji gave Ichigo a toothy, wolfish grin, “Your ears are pretty red.”

“Whatever,” Ichigo muttered, rubbing his ears.

Orihime came to the rescue, “Tell us what happened with Yhwach, Ichigo. Mr. Urahara said you and Ishida-kun were… with Aizen?” She shuddered, clearly remembering the time she spent captured in Hueco Mundo.

“Uh... “ Ichigo didn’t even know where to start, but he knew one thing: he was crap at lying. And, maybe he should tell his best friends the truth, but it didn’t really seem like such a good idea. “Ah, look, I suck at telling stories. Why don’t you tell them, Uryu?”

Uryu acted put out. “Fine. But, you’ll have to fill in what I don’t know.”

#

Uryu was a really convincing liar, and Ichigo was pretty sure they’d gotten away with it, except for Rukia. She was giving Ichigo an intense squinty-frown, like she was literally trying to see through the lies. Chad seemed a touch uncertain, too. Only Orihime nodded along happily.

Renji, meanwhile, had fallen asleep after making some disparaging comments about how now everyone had better Kidō than he did.

As they moved quietly away from Renji’s bed, Rukia was right there, making that face into Ichigo’s. He managed to ignore her until they were out on the street. Finally, he stopped and gave the face back to her, with an added tongue-sticking out. “What?”

“The Soul King is alive?”

Okay, that was the hardest part of all this bullshit. Especially with Chad right there, shaking his head “no.” Even Orihime pulled on her lower lip, probably remembering seeing Yhwach triggering Ichigo’s blut-whatever-the-fuck and Zangetsu ripping the Soul King’s cocoon in half and not being able to reject the damage. 

All they needed was Ganju to come riding up on his hog to add to the chorus of ‘nope.’

“Look, I don’t know,” Ichigo said. He glanced at Uryu, who'd somehow managed to evade being the one questioned. “Maybe they figured out how to fix him.”

Now Chad just looked sad.

“Okay,” Ichigo said, turning away from the guilt he felt at lying to very best friends. “What do you want me to say? I have no fucking idea what Hat-and-Clogs is thinking, okay?”

Rukia gave Chad and Orihime a kind of confirmation nod, “So the Soul King is dead.”

Ichigo couldn’t do it any more, not to these people, so he said, “Yeah. I killed him. It’s not like you guys didn’t see it,” he glanced at Chad and Orihime. “But don’t ask me why the worlds haven’t fallen apart, because I don’t know.”

That, at least, was true, and it must have showed in his eyes, because Rukia actually seemed satisfied.

“Nii-sama said it’s Captain Ukitake,” Rukia said in a whisper. “He told me the captain sacrificed himself somehow. We’re not supposed to talk about it, I guess--though I don’t understand why not. But he implied there was something inside the captain, something… old that was part of the Soul King.”

Aizen’s 'little god.' Ichigo nodded. 

The five of them fell into pace together and started wandering, like they were back in Karakura. He wondered if there were ever food trucks in the Seireitei, like back home. He could kill for some takoyaki or really anything hot and filling. Ichigo turned to ask Rukia, only to see Rukia and Orihime hand-in-hand, heads together sadly.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Orihime said.

Rukia rubbed her eye, but there were no tears. “He was the best captain.”

Before Ichigo could even say ‘but he’s not dead yet,’ Orihime piped up, “The service was lovely.”

“There was a service?” Ichigo asked. Hadn’t everyone only just gotten back a few hours ago? Also, he wasn’t dead!

“I can’t believe this is how I’m going to become captain,” Rukia said miserably.

Chad’s hand fell on Ichigo’s shoulder. “You were at the Twelfth.” The rest of what was said was obvious: no one was going to interrupt anything to do with Mayuri, not even for a funeral.

Orihime touched Ichigo’s sleeve, “It was very short. And, people are encouraged to stop by his grave any time to pay their respects.”

“Uh…” Ichigo said, completely baffled. “Okay.”

He gave Uryu a glance to see if he knew why on earth Kyōraku wanted to pretend Ukitake was dead. But, Uryu shook his head and shrugged. Ichigo made a note to ask Aizen about it later.

#

Ichigo didn’t even have to contrive a reason to go back to the Twelfth.

In fact, Ichigo and his friends had only just managed to find an old woman selling hot sweet potatoes off the back of a cart when Urahara came waltzing up and smacked Ichigo on the head with Benihime-in-cane-form. 

“You’re late for a very important date!” he trilled in that sing-song way he had. When Ichigo just glared at him over his food, Urahara tapped a non-existent watch on his wrist. “Time to get that seal in place.”

“Oh right,” Ichigo said. Handing his leftovers to Chad, he followed Urahara.

They walked for awhile in silence. Ichigo finally said, “So… I guess Captain Ukitake is dead, huh?”

“Very tragic,” Urahara agreed. “Very noble.”

“They buried him fast,” Ichigo muttered, hoping like it sounded like he was pissed off at having missed the funeral. 

“Shinigami bodies don’t stick around long,” Urahara noted breezily. “The more power, the faster they fade.”

Ichigo grimaced, because he guessed they were lying about all this? It was frustrating to know that the guy he kind of thought of as his mentor wasn’t even going to bother telling him the truth. But, Hat-and-Clogs had never been forthcoming even at the best of times.

A lot of the buildings they walked past were in various states of repair. Sometimes they even had to scramble up huge upheaved bits of ground. Urahara muttered something about the stink of Hado 99.

“You must be happy, though, right,” Ichigo said. “Pretty soon everything will be back to normal, and you can go back to the shouten or whatever.”

Urahara's eyes were shaded by that ubiquitous hat, but he smiled like he was pleased at the prospect. “And, what will you do, Mr. Kurosaki? With no enemy to fight, will you settle down with someone, perhaps?”

“I thought I’d finish high school first,” Ichigo shrugged.

“And then?” Urahara prodded Ichigo’s ribs suggestively.

“I should probably figure out a career, don’t you think?” Ichigo asked, shooting the old pervert the stink eye. “Uryu is thinking about going into fashion design. Maybe I should open a dojo.”

“Yes, that would suit you,” Urahara agreed. “And Ms. Inoue?”

“I have no idea what she wants to do,” Ichigo admitted, feeling kind of like a shitty friend again. Crap, what did he know about Orihime’s interests? “I guess she likes sewing, too, though I think, maybe, she wanted to grow up to be a giant robot?”

“I guess it’s good to have goals,” Urahara said pleasantly.

“Chad’ll probably keep on with his band,” Ichigo mused. “I’d ask him to help me set up the dojo, but that’s a no go.” When Urahara’s eyebrows raised curiously, Ichigo explained, “We only fight for each other. He won’t raise his fist for profit.”

“Mmmm, admirable,” Urahara muttered, clearly finding the conversation boring now that they’d switched away from possible hook-ups or whatever he’d been hoping Ichigo was going to say about Orihime. Ichigo wanted to say ‘if you like the boob-window outfit so much, maybe YOU ought to ask her out,” but fuck if he understood Hat-and-Clog’s sexual situation. Maybe they were already angling to get Orihime as part of their poly grouping? Or maybe he was just one of those creepy grown-ups, fascinated with the dating scene?

Thinking about returning to Karakura Town made Ichigo ask, “So what the fuck is up with my dad? Did he just walk off the face of the earth or what?”

“I’m sure Isshin will make his way back eventually.”

Would he, though? “Yeah, I suppose.”

If he didn’t, what was Ichigo supposed to do with the clinic? He couldn’t run it on his own. Dummo Dad never let him near any of the actual medical stuff. Yuzu though--probably they ought to figure out a way to send her to medical school. She’d make an awesome general physician.

The gates of the Twelfth came into view. 

Urahara stopped short of walking Ichigo through them for some reason. Maybe it was the animosity between him and Mayuri, or maybe it was heartbreaking to see the division he founded in someone else’s hands. It worked out, at any rate. If anyone was going to see through Aizen, it’d be that guy. Ichigo waved good-bye, but Urahara was already turned away, moving fast in the other direction.

#

Aizen spun the lock on the door and screeched an order out, “Absolute privacy, you cretins! This is delicate work and I need to concentrate.”

The surgical theatre would have been creepy to Ichigo if he hadn’t grown up around stuff just like it at the clinic. He couldn’t even begin to count how many times he’d fallen asleep on a gurney just like this one, under lights just as bright. The instruments on the tray only made Ichigo nervous because he COULDN’T identify anything beyond the skull chisel.

When the locks bolted home and the lights dimmed, Aizen let out a breath. “Twenty minutes, I’d say. Then we can pretend it’s done.”

Ichigo tucked his arms under his head. “You don’t think anyone will check?”

“Your reiryoku has already changed as a result of Yhwach’s purification,” Aizen said. “They’ll assume that’s a function of the seal.”

“Cool,” Ichigo closed his eyes. “Why are they pretending Captain Ukitake is dead?”

Ichigo could hear Aizen settling into a chair. “Politics, I suspect. The captain is gravely injured. Even with much of Mimi-Hagi restored to him, many of his internal organs were liquified. It will take centuries for him to make a full recovery. That’s a long time for a Division to go without a captain. It’s more expedient to declare him dead, I suppose.” Aizen sucked in a thoughtful breath. “Then there’s Mimi-Hagi themselves. People have heard of it now. A god that is the Right Hand of the Soul King, taken from its rightful place deep in the Rukongai by a noble family for their only son, no thought given at all to what might have happened to that District in that god’s absence? Yes, better, I imagine, to let that pass without much comment.”

Huh, okay, so dead Ukitake gets to what, save face by having died nobly? But what about when he got better? What tale would they spin? Or would he… retire? Did the Gotei captains even do that?

Ichigo decided he didn’t really want to know. Besides, he could actually imagine Ukitake being happy somewhere tending a garden, playing house….

“So, he and the Captain-Commander...?”

“Lovers, I imagine,” Aizen said. “Though, perhaps not. Perhaps very good friends who are always together and call each other pet names. I would be disappointed if they weren’t, however. They make a handsome couple.”

Ichigo had to crack open an eye. Shippy Aizen? Was this a thing? “Is everyone shippy today? Is it the ship-full moon or something? Urahara seemed determined to hook me up with Ms. Inoue.”

“I suspect he just wants you to breed,” Aizen said matter-of-factly. He was thumbing through a book, as he talked. 

“Bummer I’m not a breeder, then,” Ichigo said, flopping back down.

“No?” Aizen actually looked up from his book at that. “That’s a surprise.”

Ichigo sat up. “Is it? Why?”

Aizen blinked, as if taken aback. He put his finger in his book and set it in his lap. “I suppose I made the assumption based on the fact that you stormed the very heart of the Seireitei to rescue Kuchiki Rukia, and again Hueco Mundo for Inoue Orihime. You seemed very unstoppable, unwavering in your passions.”

“To rescue them,” Ichigo pointed out. “Nothing else. I don’t leave my friends in peril. I’d’ve done the same for Chad. Or Keigo.”

Aizen chuckled. “Oh indeed? It’s a good thing Ulquiorra is dead. He’d be very chagrined to hear this!” His humor died abruptly, and he added, “However it’s very clear, in retrospect, that it was he, himself who was smitten with Ms. Inoue.” 

They both sat there a moment, in the white hot spot-light of the surgical theatre, remembering the Quatro Esapada. Ichigo only had hazy memories of hands reaching for each other, as he’d been shaking off the murderous rage of the Vasto Lorde part of himself at the time.

“But you say, you’d have done the ‘same for,’” Aizen said after a moment, breaking their reverie. “That makes you bisexual. You’re still ‘a breeder,’ even if you like men as well, Kurosaki.”

“I LIKE a lot of people,” Ichigo said. “I just don’t want to fuck any of them. No fucking equals no breeding last time I checked.”

“Your powers of deduction are impressive,” Aizen agreed, a sarcastic smile on his painted lips. Then, more seriously he said, “If flawed. You could certainly still have children if you wanted them, Ichigo. Sex isn’t the only means of reproduction.” He lifted his arms to indicated the lab. “At any rate, I wouldn’t have pegged you for asexual, but when people are romantic I have a harder time detecting it.”

Ichigo snorted. “Yeah? You know a lot of asexuals besides me?”

Aizen shrugged, going back to his book. “Well, I know one quite well.”

Ichigo almost choked. Aizen meant himself...didn’t he? No, he was just trying to find common ground again. Like that maybe-lie about losing his mom and his sister. “What about Momo? And, Miss Inoue, you were into her. She said you were always being creepy and asking her to smile and shit.”

“Sex is a weapon,” Aizen said, only just briefly looking up from his book. “Why would I not use any weapon available to me?”

Ichigo couldn’t contain his curiosity. “So you’ve had sex?”

“Mmmm, you’d be surprised how often people are willing to trade sex for things. I secured a decent grade in zanjutsu by sleeping with my Academy instructor. And then, of course, I discovered that gave me tremendous power over her,” Aizen chuckled, as if the memory of blackmailing some professor tickled him. “After that, it was like a door opened. Some people are very desperate for sex, willing to do almost anything to get it. I’ve never been more grateful to discover it’s not a power anyone can have over me.”

Okay, yeah, now it made sense to Ichigo. “You just hate people.”

Aizen was silent for a second. Then, he shrugged, “Even so, it makes me functionally asexual.”

Ichigo stared at Aizen. He sat at the edge of the circle of bright light, his face mostly shrouded in darkness. His posture was pure Aizen--all languid and power-at-rest. That made it a little easier for Ichigo to picture Aizen instead of Mayuri, but it was still weird to see painted fingers and nails. “Every time I think I might like you, you go and wreck it.”

Aizen just nodded as though he got that a lot. “Indeed.”

They lapsed into silence and Ichigo lay back on the stretcher. Was it weird he’d just ‘come out’ to Aizen when he’d never managed to work up the courage to tell his own Dummo dad--or even Rukia or Orihime? What was it about Aizen that had him blurting out all sorts of private shit? Must be part of his superpower, Ichigo decided. All those centuries living as a mild-mannered captain must have honed his ability to get people to share their deep, dark secrets.

Not for the first time, Ichigo wondered what Aizen was like when he was just doing the captain thing. Ichigo had only ever known the villain, so it was hard to even picture Aizen going about his daily life, teaching art or whatever the fuck, and reciting haiku. That seemed so weird. And was any of it true?

Some of it must have been. Like, the calligraphy thing. Dude must have had real skill. No way would he waste Kyoka Suigetsu just to make people think he was good at it, would he?

“Do you like calligraphy, even?”

“Mmm?” Aizen sounded like he pulled himself up from his book. “Of course. Why do you ask?”

“So it wasn’t all just part of your ‘cover’?” Ichigo asked, still staring up at the bright light above him. “Some of that was Aizen Sousuke, for real?”

“Much of it was,” he said. “The easiest lie to tell is one close to the truth.”

“Deep,” Ichigo muttered sarcastically. But, it made sense, he supposed. “You’re not going to be able to do calligraphy as Mayuri.”

“No,” Aizen agreed. 

“Is that sad?”

There was a little sigh. “Calligraphy was a hobby, Ichigo. In the great scheme of things, I prefer my liberty to my hobbies.”

Ichigo laughed a little at that. He was about to formulate a smartass reply when the timer bell rang, making him startle a little and lose his train of thought. “What the hell?”

“Alas, our time together is over.”

Aizen made it sound a little snarky, like maybe this had been something he’d suffered through, but Ichigo sat up feeling genuinely bummed. Ever since Hueco Mundo, he’d started to enjoy these rare private moments with Aizen. The biggest thing he missed, however, was the Kidō training. That had been cool.

And intimate.

But, Ichigo brushed that last thought away as he pulled himself to his feet, just in time to get slammed by a powerful blast of Aizen reiatsu. It felt like a slap… or a sucker punch, the kind that takes your breath away, especially since it was unexpected. When the doors slid open, Ichigo was still trying to get his feet back under him and blinking away the sense of being cold-cocked from behind. Aizen-as-Mayuri started yelling something about how he should just get over it, the procedure wouldn’t hurt a fly, or maybe it only hurt him because he was some kind of imbecile.

Ah, right, this was for ‘show.’

“Fuck you, too, you bastard,” Ichigo snarled, pushing past Aizen-as-Mayuri. The shoulder check he gave ‘Mayuri,’ expressed his real feelings towards Aizen. Fucker. Just when he seemed like he might be decent.

Every. Damn. Time.

#

When Captain-Commander Kyōraku met him at the gates of the Twelfth, Ichigo had this weird impulse to turn around and run back to Aizen. Instead, he tried to smile… which failed miserably, so he just went with, “What the hell? Why are you here, Kyōraku-soutaicho?”

Kyōraku did one of his belly laughs and brushed off Ichigo’s concern with, “Now, now, no need for all that formality! I just thought I’d buy you a drink to celebrate our victory!”

“I’m eighteen,” Ichigo reminded him. “I’m not legal to drink until twenty.”

“Ah, yes.... well, surely you could make an exception? It’s not every day we defeat an ancient enemy!”

Kyōraku looked so hopeful, kind of like a grandpa who was just told that those kinds of toy were considered too dangerous nowadays or something. With a shrug, Ichigo agreed. “I suppose. It’s not like Japanese law applies here, anyway.”

#

The place Kyōraku took them looked like it was out of some samurai movie set. Hell, everything in this place did. As they were seated at a low table and offered a hot towel, Ichigo wondered at the Soul Society. The red paper lanterns were lovely, but where did the oil come from? He never saw any farms, but here were bowls of salted edamame. Could it all be magic or something? Ichigo took a bean pod with a frown, and pulled it between his teeth. 

It sure tasted real enough.

Even sitting cross-legged on the floor, Kyōraku was an impressive guy. He must be as tall as Chad; he was certainly as broad… maybe broader. It was hard to tell with all those layers of haori and fabulous pink kimono. Was it weird that a big bear of a guy wore a lady’s kimono every day? “You have a very thoughtful expression, Mr. Kurosaki.”

“I guess,” Ichigo said. He did not want to ask about the kimono, so he stuffed another edamame pod into his mouth.

“Have you been making plans for the future?” Kyōraku asked. 

Ichigo was saved answering by the waitress bringing over a plate of fried tofu and a small bottle of sake and two bowls. Ichigo didn’t know a whole lot about where he stood in the Soul Society’s weird-ass hierarchy, but for fucking sure Kyōraku was his elder, so he reached for the sake--only to find his fingers colliding with the Captain-Commander’s. He backed his hand off, but he was sure his expression was pure ‘the fuck??’

“You’re our guest,” Kyōraku said by way of explanation, pouring Ichigo’s sake. “At least, at the moment.”

What the fuck did that mean? Why did it have a sinister edge? Was it all this hanging out with Aizen, or did Kyōraku legit raise Ichigo’s hackles all of a sudden? Ichigo tried to act casual as he asked, “You offering me a job, chief?”

His cool was broken when his sip of sake made him cough explosively. Whoa! This shit was powerful! It kind of burned up his nose.

Kyōraku guffawed at Ichigo's distress. Reaching over, he gave Ichigo a hard slap on the shoulder. Then, turning serious, his big hand squeezed a little, “I’m not sure I have much of a choice.”

The next cough was more surprise than sake. “What? What do you mean?”

“Thing is, Mr. Kurosaki, you’ve dined with Hikifune,” his thick eyebrows went up, like this meant something critical. “I understand you might even have developed another bankai…?”

Ichigo frowned. It wasn’t like his gaining a new superpower was particularly a new thing. He kind of did this every adventure. “And?”

“And, when you were untrained you attracted Hollows to Karakura like a magnet,” Kyōraku pointed out. “You would be a burning beacon flame now… especially given the… particular nature of your soul.”

Because Zangetsu was Hollow. Hollows were drawn to try to eat other Hollows, for dominance or whatever the fuck… “So… you’re saying what, exactly? Are you saying I can’t ever go home?”

Kyōraku’s expression was pure pity. “You could, of course, Mr. Kurosaki, but you don’t seem like the sort who would willingly put his friends and family in danger.”

Right.

Fuck.

Slamming back the sake, Ichigo wiped his mouth. “I think we’re going to need way more than one bottle of this shit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is going to be the end of *this* story. 
> 
> I'm deeply considering writing what happens next to Ichigo (and Aizen), and, if/when I do that, I'll come back and add a link here so you can follow on to the next story.

**Author's Note:**

> This story continues in [Academy Blues](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9571799)


End file.
